Book 4

4.1. There is a law of the Lucanians, so I am told, that if a stranger arrives after sunset and wishes to enter someone's house for shelter, and the man does not receive him, he is fined and made to answer for his inhospitality — to the visitor himself, I suppose, and to Zeus the protector of strangers. I am told that the Dardanians from Illyria bathe only three times in the whole of their lives: at birth, at marriage, and at death. The Indians neither lend at interest nor know how to borrow; indeed it is not lawful for an Indian either to wrong another or to be wronged, and for this reason they make no written contract and accept no deposit. There is a Sardinian law by which sons would beat their fathers to death with clubs once they had grown old, and bury them, holding it disgraceful for a man far advanced in age to go on living, since the body, worn out by age, errs in many ways. There is another law of the same people: there were prosecutions for idleness, and the man who lived aimlessly had to stand trial and render account, showing the source of his living. The Assyrians gather their maidens of marriageable age into some city and put them up for public auction, and each man leads home as his bride the one he has bought. A man of Byblos who comes upon anything on the road that he did not himself set down takes nothing of it, for he regards such a find not as a windfall but as an act of injustice. The Derbices put to death those who have lived beyond seventy years, slaughtering the men as sacrifices and strangling the women. The Colchians bury their dead in hides and, having sewn them up, hang them from trees. Among the Lydians it was the custom that women should be courtesans before marriage, but once joined in wedlock to live chastely; and for a woman who erred with another man there was no possibility of pardon.

4.2. There is a story in circulation about Nicostratus the cithara-player, that in a dispute about music with Laodocus the singer to the cithara he said that the other was a small man in a great art, while he himself was a great man in a small one. It seems, then, that it is a fine thing not only to increase a household and wealth, but an art as well — if one ought to give any weight to Nicostratus, who put this so well and gracefully.

4.3. Polygnotus of Thasos and Dionysius of Colophon were painters. Polygnotus painted on the grand scale and worked out his subjects in figures of full size; the work of Dionysius, except in scale, imitated the art of Polygnotus down to the last detail — feeling, character, the disposition of the figures, the fineness of the drapery, and all the rest.

4.4. I am told there is a law in force at Thebes ordering craftsmen, both painters and sculptors, to render their likenesses toward the better. The law threatens with a fine — a fixed penalty in money — anyone who ever models or paints toward the worse.

4.5. Men have remembered benefits and repaid gratitude for them. Theseus did so to Heracles. For when Aïdoneus, king of the Molossians, had bound Theseus — at the time when he came with Pirithous to carry off the king's wife, not seeking the marriage for himself but doing it to oblige Pirithous — Heracles came among the Molossians and rescued Theseus; and on this account Theseus set up an altar to him. The Seven against Thebes too repaid gratitude to Pronax. For when Pronax had died on their account, they founded the contest in his honour, which most people suppose was first held in honour of Archemorus. Heracles also repaid gratitude to Nestor. For when Neleus refused to purify him, his other sons sided with Neleus, but Nestor did not; and for this reason, when Heracles took Pylos, he killed Neleus and his other sons, but not only spared Nestor: he granted him to hold his father's kingdom. The Athenians too, as a whole people, repaid gratitude to the descendants of Heracles. Since their forefather had been a benefactor to Theseus, the Athenians on this account brought them back into the Peloponnese. Heracles also repaid gratitude to the three hundred and sixty men of Cleonae. For when they had marched with him against the Molionidae and died nobly and well, he handed over to them the honours he had received at Nemea from the Nemeans, which they had given him when he overcame the lion that haunted their land and ruined their crops. Menestheus, the son of Peteos, too was not ungrateful toward the sons of Tyndareus. For when they had expelled the sons of Theseus and taken captive Aethra, the mother of Theseus, they gave the kingdom to Menestheus; and on this account Menestheus was the first to name them Lords and Saviours. Darius too, the son of Hystaspes, having received a cloak from Syloson while he was still a private man, gave him, when he came into possession of the kingdom, the rule of his own homeland Samos — gold for bronze, one might say.

4.6. When the Lacedaemonians wished to destroy the city of the Athenians, they consulted the god; and he answered that they should not stir the common hearth of Greece.

4.7. There was no profit, then, even in death for the wicked, since not even then do they find rest, but either they are wholly deprived of burial, or, even if they manage to be buried, they are nonetheless cast out from this last honour and from the common anchorage of all bodies. The Lacedaemonians, at any rate, when Pausanias took the side of the Medes, not only put him to death by starvation, but also cast his corpse outside their borders — so Epitimides says.

4.8. And then, who does not know how sudden and swift are the reversals of fortune? The Lacedaemonians, at any rate, who once ruled over the Thebans, were themselves in turn so mastered by them that the Thebans not only reached the Peloponnese but crossed the Eurotas and ravaged the territory of the Lacedaemonians. They very nearly took the city itself, had not Epaminondas feared that all the Peloponnesians might join in common cause and fight on behalf of Sparta. Dionysius the tyrant, when he was reduced to a siege by the Carthaginians and no hope of safety appeared, was himself disheartened and was contemplating flight. But one of his companions, a man named Ellopides, came to him and said: "Dionysius, tyranny is a fine shroud." Shamed by this, he regained his resolve, and with a few men overcame many tens of thousands, and even enlarged his rule. Amyntas the Macedonian too, when he had been defeated by the neighbouring barbarians and had lost his rule, was minded to abandon the country entirely; he would have been content if only he could save himself alone. But while he was in this state, someone repeated to him the words of Ellopides. And seizing a small piece of ground and gathering a few soldiers, he recovered his rule. The Egyptians called Ochus, in their native tongue, "the Ass," reproaching the sluggishness of his mind by reference to the dullness of that animal. In return for this he forcibly sacrificed Apis to an ass. Dion the son of Hipparinus, an exile under Dionysius, came back to war against him with two thousand soldiers, and made him what he had himself formerly been — an exile. And the Syracusans, drawing up nine triremes against the hundred and fifty of the Carthaginians, were greatly victorious.

4.9. Plato the son of Ariston once shared a tent at Olympia with men he did not know, and to whom he himself was unknown. So thoroughly did he win them over and bind them to him by his company — dining with them simply and spending his whole days with them in everything — that the strangers were delighted by their meeting with the man. He made no mention of the Academy or of Socrates; he revealed this one thing only to them, that his name was Plato. When they came to Athens, he received them very warmly and kindly. And the strangers said: "Come now, Plato, show us your namesake too, the associate of Socrates; lead us to his Academy and introduce us to the man, so that we too may gain something from him." But he, smiling gently, as was his way, said: "But I am that very man." They were astonished that, having so great a man among them, they had failed to recognize him — since he had kept their company without pretension and unaffectedly, and had shown that he could win over his companions even without his usual discourses. Plato used to call Aristotle "the Colt." What did he mean by that name? Clearly it is agreed that a colt, when it has had its fill of its mother's milk, kicks its mother. Plato was hinting, then, at a certain ingratitude in Aristotle. For Aristotle, having received from Plato the greatest seeds and provisions for philosophy, then, glutted with the best of them and breaking the bit, built a rival school against him and led a rival band of companions and associates about in the walkway, eager to be Plato's antagonist.

4.10. And then, was not Pericles, the son of Xanthippus, attentive to the Athenian people? So it seems to me. As often, at any rate, as he was about to come before the assembly, he prayed that no such word might rise to his lips as would tend to exasperate the people, proving offensive to them and giving an impression he did not intend.

4.11. Diogenes used to say that even Socrates himself lived in luxury; for he had taken needless trouble over his little house, his little couch, and the sandals which Socrates would sometimes wear.

4.12. Zeuxis of Heraclea, when he painted his Helen, made a great deal of money from that picture. For he did not allow those who wished it to look at her freely, at random and as chance permitted, but a fixed sum of silver had to be paid down, and only then might one view her. Since, then, the man of Heraclea took a fee for the painting, the Greeks of that time called that Helen of his "the Courtesan."

4.13. Epicurus of Gargettus used to cry aloud, saying: "He for whom a little is not enough — for him nothing is enough." He also said he was ready to contend even with Zeus for happiness, having a barley-cake and water. What Epicurus had in mind in praising pleasure, while thinking such thoughts as these, we shall learn another time.

4.14. Often money gathered penny by penny with much toil drains away, as Archilochus says, into the belly of a harlot woman. For just as a sea-urchin is easy to grasp but hard to hold, so it is with money too. And Anaxagoras, in his work On Kingship, says that it is hard to gather money together, but harder to set a guard around it.

4.15. They say that Hieron, the tyrant of Sicily, was at first a private man and the most unmusical of men, and that in his boorishness he differed not in the least from his brother Gelon; but when it happened that he fell ill, he became the most cultivated of men, devoting the leisure that came of his sickness to refined entertainments. So when Hieron had recovered his strength, he kept company with Simonides of Ceos and Pindar of Thebes and Bacchylides of Iulis. But Gelon was an unmusical man. They say that Ptolemy the Second too became most cultivated, having himself also fallen ill. And Plato says that Theages took up philosophy for no other reason than the care of his sickness; for it, keeping him from public affairs, drove him into the love of wisdom. And what man of sense would not have wished sickness also upon Alcibiades and Critias and Pausanias the Lacedaemonian and others? Upon Alcibiades and Critias, so that they might not run away from Socrates — the one to become insolent and at one time a lover of Sparta, at another to ape the Boeotian character, and then again the Thessalian, and to take pleasure in the ways of the Medes and Persians when he was at the court of Pharnabazus; while Critias became most tyrannical and bloodthirsty, grieved his country much, and, hated himself, ended his life. Strato too, the son of Corragus, seems to have fallen ill at the right moment; for, though well born and well off in wealth, he did not exercise. Suffering from his spleen and needing the treatment that comes from the gymnasium, he at first used it only so far as to recover his health; but advancing in the art and making it his business, he won at Olympia in a single day both wrestling and the pancratium, and again at the next Olympiad, and at Nemea, and at Pytho, and at the Isthmus. Democrates the wrestler, when he himself had fallen ill in the feet, would go to the contests and stand in the stadium, draw a circle round himself, and bid his opponents drag him outside the line; but they were defeated, unable to do it. He, standing firm and steadfast in his stance, would go off crowned.

4.16. If a man attaches himself to Callias, Callias will make him a lover of drink; if to Ismenias, a flute-player; a braggart, if to Alcibiades; a cook, if to Crobylus; a clever speaker, if to Demosthenes; a good general, if to Epaminondas; high-minded, if to Agesilaus; honest, if to Phocion; just, if to Aristides; wise, if to Socrates.

4.17. Pythagoras taught men that he had sprung from better seed than belongs to mortal nature; for on the same day and at the same hour, they say, he was seen both at Metapontum and at Croton. At Olympia, too, he displayed that one of his thighs was of gold. And he reminded Myllias of Croton that he was Midas the son of Gordius, the Phrygian. He stroked the white eagle, which submitted to him. He was also greeted as he was crossing the river Cosa, the river saying to him: "Greetings, Pythagoras." He used to say that the leaf of the mallow was the most sacred of things. He said that number was the wisest of all things, and second to it the man who gave things their names. He explained earthquakes as nothing other than a gathering of the dead. The rainbow, he said, was a beam of the sun. And the sound that often falls upon the ears was the voice of higher beings. It was not possible to raise a question with him about anything, or to ask anything further about what he had said; instead, the men of that time attended to his words as to a divine oracle. As he made his way about the cities, the report went round that Pythagoras had come not to teach but to heal. This same Pythagoras enjoined men to abstain from the heart, and from a white cock, and above all from things that have died of themselves, and not to use the public bath nor to walk the highways; for it is unclear whether those very things are clean.

4.18. When Plato came down to Sicily at the summons of Dionysius, who had sent him many invitations one after another, and Dionysius brought him up onto his chariot — himself driving, and making the son of Ariston his fellow-rider — then, they say, a Syracusan, a man of charm and not unschooled in Homer, delighted at the sight, recited those lines from the Iliad, slightly altered: "And loudly groaned the oaken axle under the weight; for it bore a mortal man, and the best of men." Though suspicious of everyone, Dionysius nevertheless had so much respect for Plato that he alone entered his presence without being searched, even though Dionysius knew him to be a friend of Dion to the last degree.

4.19. Philip the Macedonian was said to be not only good at war and a clever speaker, but to honour education most manfully. By furnishing Aristotle with abundant wealth, at all events, he was the cause of much wide experience besides — and in particular of the knowledge concerning animals; for the son of Nicomachus reaped the fruit of his Inquiry into Animals through the resources provided by Philip. He honoured Plato too, and Theophrastus.

4.20. The story goes that Democritus of Abdera, wise in other respects as well, desired in particular to escape notice, and set about this very thing in earnest. For this reason he travelled over much of the earth. He came to the Chaldaeans at Babylon, and to the Magi, and to the sages of the Indians. When his father Damasippus's estate was divided into three parts among his three sons, he took only the silver as provision for his journey and left the rest to his brothers. For this very reason Theophrastus praised him, that he travelled about gathering a better harvest than Menelaus and Odysseus. For those men wandered, differing in nothing from Phoenician traders; they amassed wealth, and this was the pretext for their voyaging and sailing about. The Abderites used to call Democritus "Philosophy," and Protagoras "Argument." Democritus laughed at everyone and said they were mad; whence his fellow-citizens called him "the Laugher." These same people say that Hippocrates, at their first meeting, took Democritus for a madman, but as their conversation went on, came to admire the man beyond measure. And they say that Hippocrates, though a Dorian, nevertheless wrote his treatises in the Ionic dialect for Democritus's sake.

4.21. The beloved of Socrates was Alcibiades, and of Plato, Dion. Dion, indeed, profited something from his lover.

4.22. The Athenians of old wore purple cloaks and put on embroidered tunics. They bound up the hair on their heads in topknots, threading golden cicadas into it, and went about decked with other added ornaments of gold. Their slaves carried folding stools behind them, so that they should not seat themselves at random and as chance allowed. Such were the men who won the battle at Marathon.

4.23. Pericles, and Callias the son of Hipponicus, and Nicias of Pergase were brought to poverty by prodigality and a life of pleasure. For when their money failed them, the three drank hemlock to one another as a final toast, and so took their leave, as if from a banquet.

4.24. Leoprepes of Ceos, the father of Simonides, once happened to be sitting in a wrestling-school; then some young men, intimate with one another, asked the man how their friendship might best be made to last. He said: "If you give way to each other's anger and do not, by coming to grips with your passion, then provoke one another against each other."

4.25. Thrasyllus of Aexone fell ill of a strange and novel madness. For leaving the city and going down to the Piraeus and living there, he believed that all the ships putting in there were his own; he registered them and sent them off again, and rejoiced over those that came safe and entered the harbour; and he continued for many years dwelling with this affliction. When his brother arrived from Sicily, he handed him over to a physician to be cured, and the physician stopped him of his disease. But Thrasyllus often recalled his time in madness, and said that he had never taken such pleasure as he then took in the ships that came safe to harbour, though none of them belonged to him at all.

4.26. Xanthus the lyric poet — and he was older than Stesichorus of Himera — says that Electra, the daughter of Agamemnon, did not have this name at first, but was called Laodice. But when Agamemnon was slain, and Aegisthus married Clytemnestra and reigned, since she remained unbedded and was growing old a virgin, the Argives called her Electra because she had no share of a husband and had had no experience of the marriage-bed.

4.27. Pamphaes of Priene presented Croesus the Lydian with thirty minae while his father was still alive. And when Croesus succeeded to the kingdom, he sent him a wagon full of silver. Diogenes, having received a small coin from Diotimus of Carystus, said: "May the gods grant you all that your heart desires — a husband and a household." For Diotimus seemed somewhat effeminate.

4.28. Pherecydes of Syros ended his life most painfully of all men, his whole body being consumed by lice; and as his appearance grew loathsome, he avoided the company of his acquaintances. Whenever anyone came and asked how he was faring, he would put his finger, stripped bare of its flesh, through the hole in the door, and say that his whole body was in such a state. The people of Delos say that the god at Delos, in anger, brought this upon him. For sitting in Delos with his disciples, he said, among much else about his own wisdom, this in particular: that he had sacrificed to none of the gods, and yet had lived no less pleasantly and free of pain than those who offer up whole hecatombs. For this idle boasting he paid the heaviest penalty.

4.29. For indeed I cannot persuade myself not to laugh at Alexander the son of Philip, if it is true that, hearing Democritus say in his writings that there are countless worlds, he was distressed that he was not master even of the one and common world. How greatly would Democritus himself have laughed at him — what need is there even to say it, when this was his very business?