The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius (best free ebook reader txt) 📕

old he said that he was not conscious of having ever done an unjust action in his life; but that he doubted about one thing: For that once when judging in a friend’s cause he had voted himself in accordance with the law, but had persuaded a friend to vote for his acquittal, in order that so he might maintain the law and yet save his friend.

But he was most especially celebrated among the Greeks for having delivered an early opinion about Cythera, an island belonging to Laconia. For having become acquainted with its nature, he said, “I wish it had never existed, or that, as it does exist, it were sunk at the bottom of the sea.” And his foresight was proved afterwards. For when Demaratus was banished by the Lacedaemonians, he advised Xerxes to keep his ships at that island: and Greece would have been subdued, if Xerxes had taken the advice. And afterwards Nicias, having reduced the island at the time of the Peloponnesian war, placed in it a garrison of Athenians, and did a great deal of harm to the Lacedaemonians.

He was very brief in his speech. On which account Aristagoras, the Milesian, calls such conciseness the Chilonean fashion, and says that it was adopted by Branchus, who built the temple among the Branchidae. Chilo was an old man, about the fifty-second Olympiad, when Aesop the fable writer flourished. And he died, as Hermippus says, at Pisa, after embracing his son, who had gained the victory in boxing at the Olympic games. The cause of his death was excess of joy, and weakness caused by extreme old age. All the spectators who were present at the games attended his funeral, paying him the highest honors. And we have written the following epigram on him:

I thank you, brightest Pollux, that the son
Of Chilo wears the wreath of victory;
Nor need we grieve if at the glorious sight
His father died. May such my last end be!

And the following inscription is engraved on his statue:

The warlike Sparta called this Chilo son,
The wisest man of all the seven sages.

One of his sayings was, “Suretyship, and then destruction.” The following letter of his is also extant:

Chilo to Periander

You desire me to abandon the expedition against the emigrants, as you yourself will go forth. But I think that a sole governor is in a slippery position at home; and I consider that tyrant a fortunate man who dies a natural death in his own house.

Pittacus

Pittacus was a native of Mitylene, and son of Hyrradius. But Duris says that his father was a Thracian. He, in union with the brothers of Alcaeus, put down Melanchrus the tyrant of Lesbos. And in the battle which took place between the Athenians and Mitylenaeans on the subject of the district of Achilis, he was the Mitylenaean general; the Athenian commander being Phrynon, a Pancratiast, who had gained the victory at Olympia. Pittacus agreed to meet him in single combat, and having a net under his shield, he entangled Phrynon without his being aware of it beforehand, and so, having killed him, he preserved the district in dispute to his countrymen. But Apollodorus, in his Chronicles, says that subsequently the Athenians had a trial with the Mitylenaeans about the district, and that the cause was submitted to Periander, who decided it in favor of the Athenians.

In consequence of this victory the Mitylenaeans held Pittacus in the greatest honor, and committed the supreme power into his hands. And he held it for ten years, and then, when he had brought the city and constitution into good order, he resigned the government. And he lived ten years after that, and the Mitylenaeans assigned him an estate, which he consecrated to the God, and to this day it is called the Pittacian land. But Sosicrates says that he cut off a small portion of it, saying that half was more than the whole; and when Croesus offered him some money he would not accept it, as he said that he had already twice as much as he wanted; for that he had succeeded to the inheritance of his brother, who had died without children.

But Pamphila says, in the second book of her Commentaries, that he had a son named Tyrrhaeus, who was killed while sitting in a barber’s shop at Cyma, by a brazier who threw an axe at him; and that the Cymaeans sent the murderer to Pittacus, who when he had learnt what had been done, dismissed the man, saying: “Pardon is better than repentance.” But Heraclitus says that the true story is that he had got Alcaeus into his power, and that he released him, saying: “Pardon is better than punishment.” He was also a lawgiver; and he made a law that if a man committed a crime while drunk, he should have double punishment; in the hope of deterring men from getting drunk, as wine was very plentiful in the island.

It was a saying of his that it was a hard thing to be good, and this apothegm is quoted by Simonides, who says: “It was a saying of Pittacus that it is a hard thing to be really a good man.” Plato also mentions it in his Protagoras. Another of his sayings was: “Even the Gods cannot strive against necessity.” Another was: “Power shows the man.” Being once asked what was best, he replied: “To do what one is doing at the moment well.” When Croesus put the question to him: “What is the greatest power?” “The power,” he replied, “of the variegated wood,” meaning the wooden tablets of the laws. He used to say too that there were some victories without bloodshed. He said once to a man of Phocaea, who was saying that we ought to seek out a virtuous man: “But if you seek ever so much you will not find one.” Some people once asked him what thing was very grateful? and