Oration 71
Imperial Dio Chrysostom Greek- There are those who say that the philosopher must in all things be superior to all men: they say he must be most skilled at conversing with men, and never silent nor at a loss for such discourses, toward those present, as will be able to delight them; otherwise, they say, the man who is not so prepared is a mere layman and of little worth. But I say that in part they speak justly and truly, and in part not. 2. For in deeming that the philosopher must everywhere be superior to the rest they seem to me to be right—unless, that is, they also say that he must know all the crafts, and do everything according to the craft better than the craftsmen, building houses and constructing ships and working bronze and weaving and farming; just as Hippias of Elis claimed to be the wisest of the Greeks, not only bringing forward poems of every kind and varied discourses of his own at Olympia and the other festivals of the Greeks, but also displaying other works—his ring and his oil-flask and strigil and cloak and girdle—as having made all of them himself, displaying to the Greeks, as it were, the first-fruits of his wisdom. 3. And Homer too, one may almost say, has made Odysseus not only superior in judgment and most skilled in deliberating about affairs and in speaking—whether in a crowd, or to a few, or to one man, and, by Zeus, in the assembly and over wine, and if he chanced to be walking the road with someone, and toward a king and toward a private man, and toward a free man and toward a slave, both when he himself was illustrious and a king, and again when unknown and a beggar, and likewise toward man and woman and maiden; and besides knowing how to fight—but also experienced in all such crafts, in carpentry and building and shipbuilding. 4. For how could he have made the bed, having cut off the olive trunk, had he not been skilled in carpentry? And how could he have built round it the chamber, had he not also known how to build? And how could he have wrought the raft, were he not experienced in shipbuilding? And in matters of planting and farming he plainly took zealous interest straight from boyhood, asking his father for trees and vines; and indeed, his father being a farmer, very careful and experienced, it was natural that he should not be ignorant of these things—seeing that he even challenges Eurymachus both to reap and to plough. And he says, too, that he is experienced in such matters as cookery and the pouring of wine and all the rest of 5. the service which, he says, the meaner sort render to the good. In these things, then, Hippias and Odysseus were perhaps clever; but I say that the philosopher cannot know all the crafts—for it is hard to work even one of them with exactness—yet that he would do everything better, whatever he chanced to do, than the rest of men; and that in matters of the crafts, should he ever be compelled to lay hold of some such thing, he is not superior according to the craft—for that is not possible, that the layman should do something according to carpentry better than the carpenter, or that one not experienced in farming should appear, in doing some farming task, more experienced than the farmer—wherein, then, would he be superior? 6. In doing or not doing the thing advantageously, and in knowing better than the craftsman when it must be done and where and at the right moment, and what is possible. To take an instance: Daedalus does not seem to me to have done well in making the Labyrinth in Crete, into which his own fellow-citizens, men and women, entered and perished; for he did not make it justly. And again, in abetting the malady of Pasiphae he did not act rightly; for it was neither advantageous nor just nor honourable to abet such things, nor to devise contrivances for the shameful and unholy. Nor, when he gave Icarus wings, if one must believe the story, do I say that he discovered this contrivance well; for he contrived things not possible, fitting wings to a man. 7. Accordingly he destroyed his son. And Homer too seems to reproach a certain carpenter of the Trojans for not having well made the ships for Alexander, in which he sailed to Greece, though he has nothing to charge against him in respect of the craft. For he says: "who also built for Alexander the shapely ships, beginners of woe," not praising him for the making of the ships, but blaming him far more than if, saying that he made the ships slow or having some other fault, he had found fault with him concerning the shipbuilding. And likewise he blames a certain huntsman and mocks his skill, because he had acquired it to no needful purpose, but knew how to shoot the beasts, while in war he hit no one but was useless through cowardice, and he says that Artemis did not then help him. 8. From these things, then, it is plain that there is need of prudence and virtue both with regard to the things men know and with regard to the things they do not know; and so the self-controlled man, such as the philosopher must be, would in all things be superior to all, whether doing one of these things or not doing it, and however he does it according to the craft. But that he will paint better than the painters without being a painter, or heal better according to the medical art than the physicians without being a physician, or sing more musically than the musicians without being experienced in music, or having become but moderately experienced; or that he will appear more experienced about numbers than the arithmeticians, or about geometry than the geometers, or about planting than the farmers, or about steering than the helmsmen, or will slaughter faster than the cooks, or carve, when carving is needed, better than those who have made this their very business—this one must not imagine. 9. And yet one of the present-day kings desired to be wise in such wisdom, as knowing the most things—not, however, the sort of things which are not admired among men, but those for which one may be crowned: to be a herald, and to sing to the lyre, and to act tragedies, and to wrestle, and to compete in the pancratium. And they say that he was competent also to paint and to model, and to play the flute both with his mouth and with his armpits, putting a wineskin beneath, that he might have escaped the disgrace which befell Athena. Was he, then, wise?