Book 3

Come then, let us also describe in words and shape forth the famous Thessalian Tempe; for it is agreed that speech too, if it has the power of description, can show whatever it wishes no less effectively than men skilled in handiwork. There is, then, a place lying between Olympus and Ossa. These are very lofty mountains, cleft apart as if by some divine design, and between them they receive a region whose length extends to forty stades, while its breadth is in one place a plethron, and in another a little more. Through the middle of it flows the river called Peneus. Into this the other rivers too flow together, and share their water with it, and make Peneus great. The place has resorts of many and various kinds, not the works of human hands, but the spontaneous handiwork of Nature, which took pains for beauty at the time when the region came into being. For ivy, abundant and very thick, is in its prime and flourishes, and after the manner of noble vines creeps up the lofty trees and grows together with them; and much bindweed runs up to the very crag and overshadows the rock; and the rock is hidden beneath, while all the green is seen, and it is a festival for the eyes. On the smooth and level ground there are varied groves and continuous shady retreats, most pleasant lodgings for travellers to flee to in the summer season, which gladly afford them coolness. And many springs flow through it, and streams of cold water run, most pleasant to drink. These waters are said to be good for those who bathe in them and to contribute to their health. And birds sing, scattered here and there, especially the musical ones, and they feast the ears right well, and escort the passers-by without effort and with pleasure, through their song banishing the weariness of those who go by. On either side of the river are the resorts and the resting-places already mentioned. Through the middle of Tempe the river Peneus goes, advancing slowly and gently like oil; and much shade is cast over it by the trees that grow alongside and the boughs that hang above, so that for the greater part of the day it shuts out the sunbeam as it comes on, and allows those who sail to sail in the cool. And all the people who dwell around come together, one with another, and sacrifice and hold gatherings and drink together. So, since there are many who sacrifice and who make burnt offerings continually, it is natural that most pleasant fragrances accompany those who walk and those who sail; thus does the constant honour paid to the higher powers make the place divine. There, indeed, the Thessalians say that Pythian Apollo was purified at the command of Zeus, when he had shot down with his arrows the dragon Python, who guarded Delphi, while Earth still held the oracle. Crowned, then, with a wreath of this Tempean bay, and taking a branch of the same bay into his right hand, the son of Zeus and Leto came to Delphi and took over the oracle. And there is an altar in that very place, where he both crowned himself and broke off the branch. And even now, every ninth year, the Delphians send well-born boys and one of their own number as chief delegate. These, coming there and sacrificing magnificently at Tempe, go back again, having plaited crowns of the same bay from which the god then crowned himself. And they go by that road which is called the Pythian, leading through Thessaly and Pelasgia and Oeta and the country of the Aenianes and that of the Malians and Dorians and the Western Locrians. These too escort them with reverence and honour, no less than do those who honour the men who bring the sacred things from the Hyperboreans to this same god. And indeed at the Pythian games they give the victors crowns of this bay. So much let me too now have said about Tempe in Thessaly.

To Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, while he was earnestly conversing with his friends, someone came and said that his two sons had died — the only sons Anaxagoras had. And he, in no way disturbed, said: "I knew, when I begot them, that I had begotten mortals."

To Xenophon, as he was sacrificing, a messenger came from Mantinea, saying that his son Gryllus was dead. He laid aside his crown, but went on sacrificing. But when the messenger added to his former words this also, that he had died victorious, Xenophon set the crown again upon his head. These things are commonly known and have gone out to many.

Dion, the son of Hipparinus and the disciple of Plato, happened to be conducting some public and common business, when his son, falling from the roof into the courtyard, ended his life. He changed nothing at this, but continued doing what he had been doing from the first.

They say that Antigonus the Second, when some men brought to him his son's corpse from the battle-line, looked at him, but did not change colour, nor did he weep over him; rather, praising him as a good soldier, he ordered him to be buried.

Crates the Theban is found to have been high-minded in other respects too, and contemptuous of the things admired by the multitude — and so also of money and of country. Now that he gave up his property to the Thebans, this has gone out to all; but the other thing about him is not known to all. It is this. As he was departing from Thebes after it had been refounded, he said: "I have no need of a city which some other Alexander will raze."

Demochares, the nephew of Demosthenes, wishing to show that he despised the evil-speaking of the many, when he saw some censorious fellows sitting in a surgery, eager by every means to speak ill, said: "What do you say, you Dysmenidae?" — at once unmasking their character by this name.

The Athenians chose Phrynichus general, neither for his political zeal nor for the worth of his family, nor yet because he was rich; for often men were admired at Athens for these things and were preferred to others. But because he had composed for the war-dancers in a certain tragedy melodies suitable and warlike, in this way he so won over the theatre and prevailed upon those present that at once they chose him to be general, trusting that he would lead in the works of war well and as need required, since the melodies and verses he had made in his drama were not out of keeping with men in arms.

With a man in love a man not in love would not join in the ranks when the battle presses and the war draws together. For the man who knows no love flees and runs away from the lover, as one profane and uninitiated to the god, and brave only so far as his soul goes and his body has strength; but he dreads the other, as one possessed and inspired by a god, and, by Zeus, maddened not with this common madness from Ares, but from Eros. For those who are seized by the other of these gods — one of whom Homer says rages like Ares — these, encompassed by a single divinity, contend well and finely only so far as they are once inspired; but the bacchants of Eros, fighting and enduring a double servitude, both from the onset of Ares and from the kindling of Eros, naturally, according to the Cretans' notion, succeed doubly. So no one could blame the man who, bent on slaughter from Ares and Eros together, will not stand to fight against a hoplite who is ranged under one god only, and not under the two.

About the ephors at Lacedaemon I have many other fine things to tell, but what I have chosen, this I will now relate. When one of the handsome youths among them preferred a rich lover to a worthy poor one, they laid a fine upon him, punishing, as it seems, his love of money with a penalty in money. And another, a fine and good man who loved none of the well-formed youths, him too they fined, because, being worthy, he loved no one; for plainly he would have made that youth like himself, and perhaps another too. For the goodwill of lovers toward their beloveds is powerful to work virtues in them, when they themselves are upright. And indeed this too is a Laconian law: when a youth errs, they pardon the simplicity of his character and the youthfulness of his age, but punish the lover on his behalf, bidding the lovers be judges and examiners of what the youths do.

The Peripatetics say that by day the soul, in bondage to the body, is entangled with it and cannot purely behold the truth; but by night, released from this service and gathered into a sphere in the region about the chest, it becomes more prophetic, whence come dreams.

The handsome youths at Lacedaemon are not coy toward their lovers, nor arrogant, since one may learn from them the opposite of what is found among other young men in their bloom. They themselves, indeed, beg their lovers to "breathe into" them; and this is a Lacedaemonian expression, meaning that one ought to love. A Spartan love knows nothing shameful; for if a youth has dared to submit to outrage, or a lover to commit it, it has profited neither to remain in Sparta; for either they were banished from their country, or, what is yet harsher, deprived of life itself.

The nation of the Tapyri is so very fond of wine that they live in wine, and spend the greater part of their lives in their intercourse with it. And they do not only use it for drinking, but wine is for them an ointment as well, as oil is for others.

The Byzantines, being terrible drunkards, have a reputation for living in the taverns, having moved out of their own houses and chambers, and let them out to the strangers who sojourn in the city; and not only their houses, but they gave up their wives to them as well, so that the Byzantines bear at once a double charge, of drunkenness and of pandering. And, dissolving as they do under drunkenness and wine, they rejoice to hear the flute, and being played to is their whole business; but a trumpet they cannot endure at all. And from this one may understand that the Byzantines are most ill-disposed toward arms and wars. For this reason indeed Leonidas, their general, in a hard siege, when the enemy had assaulted the walls and the Byzantines, deserting their posts, were passing the day in their usual haunts, ordered the taverns to be set up for them upon the walls. And this stratagem persuaded them, late and slowly, not to leave their station, since their pretext had been taken away from them. Damon tells these things of them. And Menander too seems to agree with these, when he says: "Byzantium makes the merchants drunkards; we drank the whole night through."

The Argives and Tirynthians too have been made a subject of comedy, as approaching wine too intemperately. As for the Thracians, this indeed is already noised abroad and made common talk, that they are most terrible drinkers. Nor have the Illyrians escaped this charge, but they have taken on besides that further reproach, that it is permitted to the strangers present at a banquet to drink to the wives, each to whichever he wishes, even if the woman is no relation to him at all.

Which, then, was the better general, Demetrius the Besieger or Timotheus the Athenian? I will tell the manner of both; and it is for you to prefer the one. Demetrius took cities by force and greed, doing the greatest harm and wrong, bringing up engines and shaking down and undermining the walls; but Timotheus by persuading and teaching with argument that it was more profitable to obey the Athenians.

Philosophers too engaged in public life, and did not, having become good merely in mind, live out their days in quiet. For Zaleucus set right the public affairs in Locri, and Charondas those in Catana and those in Rhegium, when he was in exile from Catana. To the Tarentines Archytas was a good man, and Solon to the Athenians, and Bias and Thales benefited Ionia greatly, and Chilon the Lacedaemonians, and Pittacus the Mytilenaeans, and Cleobulus the Rhodians. And Anaximander led the colony from Miletus to Apollonia. Moreover Xenophon was a good soldier and a better general, when he went up with Cyrus; and when Cyrus and those with him had died, and need called for one who would be able to save the Greeks and lead them back to their homes, this was that man. And Plato, son of Ariston, brought Dion back to Sicily, and through the things he counselled and taught him, by these he overthrew the tyranny of Dionysius. Socrates was not pleased with the Athenian constitution; for he saw the democracy to be tyrannical and monarchic; and for this reason he neither put to the vote for the Athenians the death of the ten generals, nor shared in the impieties of the Thirty. But where it was necessary to fight for his country, there he was a soldier who made no excuse. He served, at any rate, at Delium, and at Amphipolis, and at Potidaea. Aristotle raised up his own country again, fallen — as the saying goes — not merely on its knees, but flat on its face. Demetrius of Phalerum governed most illustriously at Athens, until the envy familiar to the Athenians drove him out; and in Egypt, being with Ptolemy, he took charge of legislation. And who will deny that Pericles, son of Xanthippus, was a philosopher, and Epaminondas, son of Polymnis, and Phocion, son of Phocus, and Aristides, son of Lysimachus, and Ephialtes, son of Sophonides, and, lower still in time, Carneades and Critolaus, if indeed they came to Rome as ambassadors on behalf of the Athenians, and found safety for them? These so abashed the senate that they said: "The Athenians sent as ambassadors not men to persuade us, but men to force us to do whatever they wish." And I would call it statesmanship too, the work of Persaeus, if indeed he educated Antigonus, and that of Aristotle, since he too was plainly philosophizing with Alexander, the son of Philip, when he was young. And Lysis, the disciple of Pythagoras, he too educated Epaminondas. If, then, anyone calls philosophers men of no action, well, these words of his are silly and senseless; for I, for my part, would seize upon the freedom from public affairs that goes with them, and the love of quiet, even at a run.

Theopompus relates a certain meeting of Midas the Phrygian and Silenus. This Silenus was the son of a nymph, lower in nature than a god, but higher than a man, since he was also immortal. They discoursed of many other things with each other, and among them Silenus said this to Midas: that Europe and Asia and Libya were islands, around which Ocean flowed in a circle; and that the only mainland was that one outside this world of ours. And he described its size as boundless. It nourished other animals, large ones, and men of double the stature of those here, and these lived a time not so long as ours, but that too doubled. And there were many great cities and peculiar ways of life, and laws were established among them set in opposition to those held among us. There were, he said, two cities greatest in size, and resembling one another in nothing; and the one was named Warlike, the other Pious. The Pious, then, pass their lives in peace and deep wealth, and take the fruits from the earth without ploughs and oxen, and tilling and sowing are no labour to them. And they continue, he said, healthy and free of sickness, and end their lives laughing heartily and rejoicing. And they are so unquestionably just that even the gods do not often disdain to visit them. The men of the Warlike city, on the other hand, are most warlike themselves, and are born with arms, and are always at war, and subdue their neighbours, and this one city rules over very many nations. Its inhabitants are not fewer than two million. They die, for the rest, of sickness; but this is rare, since for the most part they are struck down in wars by stones or by wood; for they are unwounded by iron. They have an abundance of gold and silver, so that gold is held in less honour among them than iron is among us. He said too that these once attempted to cross over to these our islands, and, sailing across Ocean with ten thousand thousand men, came as far as the Hyperboreans. And learning that these were the happiest of all among us, they despised them as faring poorly and meanly, and on this account scorned to go any further. And he added something still more wonderful. Certain men called Meropes, he said, dwell among them in many great cities, and at the extremity of their country there is a place called Anostus ("No-Return"), resembling a chasm, held neither by darkness nor by light, but with an air lying over it mingled with a murky redness. Two rivers flow about this place, the one called the river of Pleasure, the other of Grief; and beside each of them stand trees of the size of a great plane-tree. The trees that grow beside the river of Grief bear fruits of such a nature that if anyone tastes them, he sheds so many tears that he wastes away all the rest of his life in mourning, and so dies. But the others, that grow beside the river of Pleasure, bring forth fruit of the opposite kind. For whoever tastes of these ceases from his former desires, and even if he was in love forgets it, and becomes little by little younger, and takes back the years that have passed and those already gone. For, casting off old age, he returns to his prime, then withdraws to the age of young men, then becomes a child, then an infant, and after that is wholly consumed. And these things, if the Chian seems to anyone worthy of belief, let them be believed; but to me he seems a clever teller of tales, both in these matters and in others.

They say that the first quarrel of Aristotle with Plato arose from this. Plato was not pleased with his manner of life nor with his attention to his body. For Aristotle used elaborate dress and footwear, and had his hair cut in a fashion unwonted to Plato, and prided himself on wearing many rings; and there was a certain mockery about his face, and an unseasonable garrulity when he spoke, and this too accused his character. All these things, that they are foreign to a philosopher, is plain. Seeing them, then, Plato did not admit the man, but preferred to him Xenocrates and Speusippus and Amyclas and others, treating them with honour in other ways and especially with a share in his discourses. Now once, when Xenocrates went abroad to his country, Aristotle set upon Plato, gathering about him a band of his own followers, among whom were Mnason the Phocian and others of the same sort. Speusippus was ill at that time, and for this reason was unable to walk with Plato. And Plato had reached eighty years, and through his age his memory had in some part failed him. So Aristotle, setting upon him and plotting against him, and very ambitiously putting his questions, and in a manner aiming at refutation, was plainly both unjust and ungracious; and for this reason Plato withdrew from his walk outside, and walked within with his friends. When three months had passed, Xenocrates returned from abroad, and finds Aristotle walking where he had left Plato. Seeing that he, with his acquaintances, was not withdrawing toward Plato from the walk, but going off by himself into the city, he asked one of those in the walk where in the world Plato was; for he suspected that he was ill. And the man answered: "He is not ill, but Aristotle, troubling him, has made him give up the walk, and, withdrawing, he philosophizes in his own garden." Xenocrates, on hearing this, went at once to Plato, and found him conversing with those about him; and they were many, and worthy of mention, and the youths who seemed most distinguished. When he had ceased from his discourse, he greeted Xenocrates, as was natural, with kindness, and Xenocrates in turn greeted him likewise. When the gathering had broken up, Xenocrates, neither saying anything to Plato nor hearing anything, gathered his companions and rebuked Speusippus very strongly for having given up the walk to Aristotle; and he himself set upon the Stagirite vigorously, and went so far in his rivalry that he drove him out and gave back the accustomed place to Plato.

To Lysander the Spartan, when he came to Ionia, the foreigners in Ionia sent many other things, and among them an ox and a cake. He, looking at the cake, asked: "What is that pastry meant to be?" And the one who brought it answered that it was made of honey and cheese and certain other things. And Lysander said: "Give this to the Helots; for it is no food for a free man." But the ox he ordered to be prepared after the manner of his fathers, and he dined on it gladly.

Once, while still a boy, Themistocles was returning from school. Then, as Pisistratus was approaching, his attendant told Themistocles to give way a little from the road, the tyrant drawing near. But he answered very freely: "Is this road not wide enough for him?" So noble and high-minded a thing showed itself in Themistocles even then.

When Ilium was taken, the Achaeans, pitying the fortunes of the captured and doing this in truly Greek fashion, made this proclamation: that each of the free men should carry off, taking it up, one thing of his own that he wished. So Aeneas, taking up his fathers' gods, carried them, disdaining all else. The Greeks, then, pleased at the man's piety, granted him to take a second possession; and he, taking up his father, who was very aged, carried him on his shoulders. Astonished at this too, not least, they gave up to him all his own possessions, agreeing that toward men who are pious, and who hold the gods and their parents in reverence, even those who are by nature enemies become gentle.

Fine, then, are Alexander's deeds at the Granicus and at Issus, and the battle at Arbela, and Darius defeated and the Persians enslaved to the Macedonians; fine too the conquest of all the rest of Asia, and the Indians as well obeying Alexander; fine too the affair at Tyre, and the events among the Oxydracae, and the rest of his deeds. For what need is there now to take in within the narrow bounds of speech so great a valour of the man in arms? And let it be granted, too, that Fortune loved Alexander in most things, if anyone wishes to be contentious. Fine, then, is Alexander when not overcome by Fortune, nor giving out against her eagerness toward him. But these other things of Alexander are no longer fine. On the fifth of the month Dios, they say, he drank at Medius's; then on the sixth he slept off the drinking, and lived of that day only so much as to rise and transact business with his officers about the next day's march, saying that it would be early. And on the seventh he feasted at Perdiccas's, and drank again, and on the eighth he slept. On the fifteenth of the same month he drank on this day too, and on the day following did the usual things that follow drinking. He dined at Bagoas's on the twenty-fourth — and Bagoas's house was ten stades distant from the palace — then on the twenty-fifth he slept. One of two things, then: either Alexander wrongs himself by losing so many days of the month to wine, or those who recorded these things lie. And one may infer from these that they say like things of the rest of the time as well — among whom is Eumenes the Cardian.

Xenophon cared, among other serious things, also to have fine arms. For he said that to one who conquered the enemy the fairest array was fitting, and that to one who died in battle it was a fine thing to lie nobly in fine armour; for to a noble man these are the funeral adornments that truly adorn him. They say, then, that the son of Gryllus had an Argolic shield, an Attic breastplate, a Boeotian-made helmet, and an Epidaurian horse. And I, for my part, would say that such things belong to a man who loves what is fine and thinks himself worthy of fine things.

Leonidas the Lacedaemonian and the three hundred with him chose the death prophesied for them at Thermopylae, and, contending well and finely for Greece, met a glorious end, and left to themselves undying glory and good fame through all time.

Pindarus, son of Melas and grandson, through his mother, of Alyattes the Lydian, having succeeded to the tyranny of the Ephesians, was harsh and inexorable as regards punishments; but in other respects he seemed to be a lover of his country and temperate, and took great forethought that his country should not be enslaved to the barbarians. He showed that this was so by the following. For when Croesus, his uncle on his mother's side, in subduing Ionia sent an embassy also to Pindarus, demanding that the Ephesians become subject to him, and when he was not persuaded, Croesus besieged the city. And when one of the towers — afterward called the Traitor — was overthrown, and the danger was seen before their eyes, Pindarus advised the Ephesians to fasten cords from the gates and the walls and tie them to the columns of the temple of Artemis, as though leaving the city to be a dedication to Artemis, devising through this means a sanctuary for Ephesus; and he advised them to go forward and entreat the Lydian. When the Ephesians put forth their suppliant olive-branch, they say that Croesus laughed and, accepting the stratagem mildly, granted the Ephesians safety with freedom, but ordered Pindarus to depart from the city. He did not gainsay it, but taking those of his friends who wished to set out with him, and entrusting his son and the greater part of his property to the city, and appointing one of his intimates, Pasicles, guardian both of the boy and of the money, he set off for the Peloponnese, exchanging a tyrant's life for a self-chosen exile, that he might not make his country subject to the Lydians.

I have heard this story too; whether it is true, I do not know; but what I have heard is this. Plato, son of Ariston, worn down by poverty, was about to go abroad on military service; but, caught by Socrates as he was buying arms, Plato was checked in his eagerness, when Socrates had discoursed to him on what was fitting and persuaded him to desire philosophy.

Socrates, seeing Alcibiades puffed up over his wealth and proud of his abundance and still more of his lands, led him to a place in the city where there was set up a tablet bearing a map of the earth, and bade Alcibiades seek out Attica there. When he had found it, he bade him examine his own lands. And when he said, "But they are nowhere drawn," Socrates said: "Are you proud, then, over these things, which are no part of the earth at all?"

Diogenes of Sinope used continually to say of himself that he fulfilled and endured the curses of tragedy; for he was a wanderer, homeless, deprived of country, a beggar, poorly clad, living from day to day. And yet over these things he was as proud as Alexander over the empire of the inhabited world, when, having conquered the Indians, he returned to Babylon.

Amoebeus the lyre-singer was said to be most temperate, and, having a most beautiful wife, not to consort with her. And Diogenes the tragic actor renounced the licentious bed altogether and entirely. And Cleitomachus the pancratiast, if ever he saw even dogs coupling, would turn away; and at a symposium, if any talk of love crept in, he would rise and depart.

Nicias the painter had such earnestness about painting that often he forgot to take food, so wholly absorbed was he in his art.

Alexander, son of Philip, while a boy not yet come to manhood, was learning to play the lyre. When his teacher bade him strike a certain string with a melody, the one the music required, he said: "And what difference will it make if I strike this one?" — pointing to another. But the teacher said it made no difference to one who was to be king, but to one who was to play the lyre as a craft. And this man, it seems, feared the fate of Linus. For Linus taught Heracles, while he was still a boy, to play the lyre; and when Heracles handled the instrument too unmusically, Linus was vexed with him. And Heracles, in his indignation, struck Linus with the plectrum and killed him.

Satyrus the flute-player often listened to Ariston the philosopher, and, charmed by what was said, would add: "Were it not that I might cast these bows into the bright fire" — hinting at his flutes, and in a manner disparaging his own art by comparison with philosophy.

Among the Laconians and the Romans there was a law that it was not permitted to anyone to buy provisions either of whatever kind he wished or in whatever quantity he wished; for they ordered the citizens to be temperate both in other ways and not least through the table.

There is an Attic story current that formerly in the Academy it was not even permitted to laugh; for they tried to keep the place untrodden by insolence and idleness.

Aristotle, when he left Athens for fear of the trial, said to one who asked him, "What sort of city is that of the Athenians?": "A very fair one; but in it pear ripens upon pear, and fig upon fig" — meaning the informers. And to one who asked why he left Athens, he answered that he did not wish the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy — hinting at the fate of Socrates and the danger to himself.

There is a law of the Ceans: those among them who are very aged, as if inviting themselves to a feast or to some festal sacrifice, come together and, crowning themselves, drink hemlock, whenever they are conscious that they are useless for the works that profit their country, their judgement by now somewhat failing them through age.

They say that at Athens the olive and the fig were first found, which the earth also first gave up. And the Athenians were the first to learn to give and receive justice. And they first devised the contest of the body, and stripped and anointed themselves. And Erichthonius was the first to yoke horses.

The Arcadians had acorns for their food, the Argives wild pears, the Athenians figs, the Tirynthians wild pears, the Indians reeds, the Carmanians dates, the Maeotians and Sauromatae millet, the Persians terebinth and cress.

The fellow-dancers of Dionysus were the Satyrs, called by some Tityri. They got the name from the warblings in which they delight. The Satyrs are named from their grinning, the Sileni from their mocking; and "sillos" they call a reproach made with vexatious jesting. The dress of the Sileni was tunics shaggy on both sides. The robe hints at the planting given by Dionysus and the thickets of vine-shoots.

The ancients called bearing much fruit "phlyein." Hence they called Dionysus Phleon and Protrygaeus and Staphylites and Omphacites, and in various other ways besides.

Elege and Celaene were daughters of Proetus. The queen of Cyprus made them wanton, and they ran, they say, naked and raving over a part of the Peloponnese, and went out into other lands of Greece as well, distraught with the disease. I hear too that a kind of bacchic frenzy fell upon the women of the Lacedaemonians and those of the Chians. And that the women of the Boeotians raged most divinely, tragedy too proclaims. They say that the daughters of Minyas alone — Leucippe and Arsippe and Alcithoe — held back from this dance of Dionysus. The reason was that they longed for their husbands, and for this cause they did not become maenads of the god. He was angered, and while they were at their looms and labouring very zealously over the work of Ergane, suddenly ivy and vines crept about the looms, and serpents lodged in the wool-baskets, and from the roofs dropped drops of wine and milk. But not even these things persuaded them to come to the worship of the god. There, indeed, they wrought a deed off Cithaeron no less than the one on Cithaeron; for the daughters of Minyas, beginning their madness, tore apart the son of Leucippe, still tender and young, like a fawn, and then from there rushed against the maenads who were maddened from the first; and these pursued them because of the pollution. From this they became birds, and one changed her form to a crow, another to a bat, another to an owl.

At Sybaris, while a lyre-singer was singing in the contest which they celebrated in honour of Hera, the Sybarites, falling into faction over him and taking up arms against one another, the lyre-singer in his fear, in his very robes, fled for refuge to the altar of Hera; but they did not spare the lyre-singer even there. And a little later blood seemed to gush up in the temple of Hera, no less than an ever-flowing spring; and the Sybarites sent to Delphi. And the Pythia answered: "Go forth from my tripods; still much blood about your hands, dripping from the stone threshold, holds you back. I will not give you oracles. The Muses' servant you killed at Hera's altars, not shunning the gods' vengeance. For those who do evil the end of justice comes not slow nor to be turned aside, not even if they be the offspring of Zeus; but it whirls about their own heads and upon their own children, and woe upon woe comes upon their houses." And justice did not tarry; for, taking up arms against the Crotoniates, they were driven from their homes by them, and their city was wiped away.

Three young men, fellow-citizens, coming to Delphi as sacred envoys, fell in with evildoers. One, then, fled from the robbers; the second of them grappled with the last of the brigands, the others having perished first, and missed the robber but drove his sword into his friend. To the one who fled the Pythia gave this answer: "Being near at hand while your friend was dying, you did not help him. I will not give you oracles; go forth from the beautiful temple." But to the other: "You killed your comrade in defending him; blood did not stain you, but your hands are purer than they were before."

They say that an oracle came forth to Philip in Boeotia, at the shrine of Trophonius, that he must beware the chariot. And so, for fear of the oracle, the story goes that he never mounted a chariot. There is, then, a double account current about this. The one says that the sword of Pausanias, with which he did Philip to death, had a chariot carved in ivory upon the hilt; the other, that as he was going round the Theban lake called Harma ("Chariot") he was slain. The first account is the common one; the other has not gone out to all.

This is a law of the Stagirites, and altogether a Greek one: "What you did not lay down," it says, "do not take up."

At first the Athenians praised Timotheus; but when he was thought to have erred in what he was thought to have done, his foregoing valour did not save him even a little, nor yet the virtues of his ancestors. And Themistocles gained nothing either from the sea-battle off Salamis or from the embassy to Sparta — I mean the one on which he served as ambassador while stealing the walling of the Athenians. For he too was exiled, not from Athens only, but from all Greece. And Pausanias the Lacedaemonian gained nothing from the victory at Plataea; but for what he did anew at Byzantium, on account of these things he destroyed even the gratitude owed him for his first deeds. And Phocion the good repute that called him "the Honest" helped not at all, nor his seventy-five years, which he lived through wronging the Athenians in no respect at all; but when he was thought to be betraying the Piraeus to Antipater, the Athenians condemned him to death.