Book 5

5.1. Tachos the Egyptian, so long as he kept to his native diet and lived frugally, passed his life in the best of health; but when he came to the Persians and fell into their luxury, he could not bear the unaccustomed food, and ended his life of dysentery, exchanging luxury for death.

5.2. Pherecydes, the teacher of Pythagoras, when he fell into his sickness, first sweated a warm, sticky sweat like slime, and afterward a foul one, and then he became infested with lice. As his flesh dissolved away into the lice, a wasting set in, and so he passed from life.

5.3. Aristotle says that what are now called the Pillars of Heracles were, before they were so named, called the Pillars of Briareos; but when Heracles had purged land and sea and become beyond dispute the benefactor of mankind, men, honouring him, set the memory of Briareos at naught and named them the Pillars of Heracles.

5.4. There is a Delian tale of two plants that sprang up in Delos, an olive and a palm, which Leto grasped and at once gave birth, though till then she had been unable to do so.

5.5. Epaminondas had a single cloak, and that a dirty one; and whenever he gave it to the fuller, he himself stayed at home for want of another. While he was thus circumstanced, when the king of the Persians sent him much gold, he would not accept it; and, if I judge rightly, the man who did not take it was higher-minded than the man who offered it.

5.6. It is right to praise the end of Calanus the Indian as well — another might say to marvel at it. It came about thus. Calanus, the Indian sage, having bidden a long farewell to Alexander and the Macedonians and to life, when he wished to release himself from the bonds of the body, had a pyre heaped up in the fairest suburb of Babylon; and the wood was dry and choicely selected for fragrance — cedar and citron-wood and cypress and myrtle and bay. Then, having exercised in his accustomed exercise — which was running — he went up and stood in the middle of the pyre, crowned with a wreath of reed. The sun struck him, and he made obeisance to it; and this was the signal for the Macedonians to kindle the pyre. This was done, and he, enveloped by the flame, stood unflinching, and did not fall until he was wholly consumed. At this, they say, even Alexander was astonished, and said that Calanus had overcome greater adversaries than himself; for he had striven against Porus and Taxiles and Darius, but Calanus against pain and death.

5.7. The Scythians wander about their own land; but Anacharsis, being a wise man, carried his wandering farther still. He came, at any rate, to Greece, and Solon admired him.

5.8. Mockery and abuse seem to me to have no power. For if abuse meets with a firm character, it is dissolved; but if with a base and abject one, it prevails, and often not only grieves but kills. Let these be the proof of it: Socrates, when mocked in comedy, laughed; but Poliagrus hanged himself.

5.9. Aristotle, having squandered the money he had from his father, set out on military service, and then, faring badly in it, turned up as a seller of drugs. Slipping into the Peripatos and listening at the edge of the lectures, being by nature better endowed than many, he then took on the disposition which he afterward acquired.

5.10. The Athenians were always toiling to build themselves a fleet. Over the years, succeeding at times and failing at others, they lost two hundred triremes with their crews in Egypt, a hundred and fifty off Cyprus, two hundred and forty in Sicily, and two hundred in the Hellespont. Of hoplites they lost forty thousand in Sicily, and a thousand at Chaeronea.

5.11. The king of the Thracians — let someone else tell his name — when Xerxes marched against Greece, fled to Mount Rhodope, and advised his six sons not to make war on Greece. But they were not persuaded; and when they returned, he blinded them all, doing no Hellenic deed.

5.12. I cannot help loving these things in the Athenians. When the assembly was in session, Demades came forward and proposed by decree that Alexander be made the thirteenth god. But the people, not bearing the excess of impiety, fined Demades a hundred talents, because he had enrolled Alexander, a mortal, among the Olympians.

5.13. The Athenians were terribly versatile in their constitutions and ready for changes beyond all others. For they bore monarchy with moderation under Cecrops and Erechtheus and Theseus and the Codrids down the line; they made trial of tyranny under the Pisistratids; they practised aristocracy down to the time of the Four Hundred; then later ten of the citizens ruled the city each year; and finally there came anarchy at the time of the establishment of the Thirty. Whether one ought to praise so abrupt a turning of their character, I for my part do not know.

5.14. This too is an Attic law. Whoever comes upon the unburied body of a man must by all means cast earth upon it, burying it facing toward the west. This also was observed among them: a plough-ox that has laboured under the yoke with the plough, or even with the wagon, must not be sacrificed, since it too would be a farmer and a sharer in the labours of men.

5.15. There were Attic courts: for those who killed with deliberate intent, on the Areopagus; for those who killed unintentionally, at the Palladium; and for those who admitted the killing but disputed that it was just, the inquiries were held at the Delphinium.

5.16. A child picked up a golden leaf that had fallen from the crown of Artemis, and did not escape notice. So the judges set before the child toys and knucklebones and the golden leaf; and again it was drawn to the gold. For this they put it to death as a temple-robber, granting no pardon to its age, but exacting punishment for the deed.

5.17. So great was the superstition of the Athenians that if anyone cut a small holm-oak out of a hero's shrine, they would put him to death. Indeed, when Atarbes killed the sacred sparrow of Asclepius by striking it, the Athenians did not overlook this idly, but put Atarbes to death; and they granted pardon neither for ignorance nor for madness, holding the things of the god above both. For it was said that he did it unwillingly — others say, in a fit of madness.

5.18. When the council of the Areopagus had arrested a certain sorceress and was about to put her to death, they did not kill her until she had given birth; for when she was seized, she was with child. Releasing the innocent infant from the sentence, they justly assigned the death to the guilty woman alone.

5.19. Aeschylus the tragic poet was being tried for impiety over one of his plays. When the Athenians were ready to stone him, Amynias, his younger brother, drew aside his cloak and showed his forearm stripped of its hand. Now it happened that Amynias had won distinction at Salamis where he lost his hand, and was the first of the Athenians to receive the prize for valour. When the judges saw the man's affliction, they remembered his deeds and acquitted Aeschylus.

5.20. When the Tarentines were besieged by the Athenians and about to be taken by famine, the people of Rhegium voted to fast one day in every ten and to give over the food of that day to the Tarentines. So when the Athenians withdrew, they were saved; and remembering their distress, the Tarentines keep a festival called the Fast.

5.21. There is a story that the report about Medea is false: that she did not kill her children, but the Corinthians did. This tale about the woman of Colchis, and the play, they say Euripides composed at the request of the Corinthians, and the falsehood prevailed over the truth through the poet's excellence. And on account of the daring deed against the children, the Corinthians to this day make offerings to the children, as if paying them a tribute.