Epicharmus
historical figure · 5 works · 12 mentions · 15 anchored passages
in the texts
Stromata
Sicilian comic poet quoted for the saying that mind alone truly sees and hears.
"Mind sees and mind hears;
And Epicharmus says, "Remember to be distrustful:
"This is the nature of men—blown-up wineskins.
De Anima
Comic poet quoted in support of the view that only the mind truly perceives.
’ He remembered, of course, Epicharmus the comic poet too:
For the rest, Epicharmus, with Philochorus the Athenian, even raised dreams to the highest summit among the kinds of divination.
But since it is not in our choice to dream (for Epicharmus too thinks thus), how will the soul itself be to itself the cause of any vision?
Nicomachean Ethics
Comic poet whose remark is invoked as a skeptical comment on the debtor/creditor explanation of benefactor affection.
Epicharmus no doubt would say that people who give this explanation are looking at the seamy side of life;
Tusculan Disputations
Sicilian comic poet and thinker, quoted on the distinction between dying and being dead.
But you seem to me to follow the opinion of Epicharmus, a man as shrewd as he was not without wit, Sicilian that he was.
Memorabilia
A comic poet whose sayings on toil as the price the gods set on good things are cited by Socrates immediately after the verses of Hesiod, reinforcing the same argument.
The gods demand of us toil as the price of all good things.
Knave, yearn not for the soft things, lest thou earn the hard.