Dio, continued

Up on Lacus in the last few days, a few more of the Greek originals of the Discourses of Dio Chrysostom: 53, 56, 57, 60, 80. For a while, some of the wind was taken out of my sails when I discovered that Perseus has them all — but in fact, on closer inspection, they only have 1‑13 and 31‑35, which right now is nice complementarity, since of those I only have 5 and 9. At any rate, for the Greek originals, the situation is currently: 39 of them only on Lacus, 16 only on Perseus, and 2 on both: with 23 not online anywhere that I know of. For English translations, Dio is complete on Lacus, and as far as I can tell, neither Perseus nor anyone else has any of them.

Modern cartoons, ancient ideas

Martin Rowson is a British cartoonist. You can find his work in The Guardian, like this one, which connects the Tottenham Riots with the financial crises that continue to plague the western world:

I think it’s brilliant, but that’s not why I am writing this. The same comparison – politicians doing nothing while the world is burning – is made in the next cartoon, which appeared on 28 October 1912 in the German satirical journal Simplicissimus. It illustrates the outbreak of the First Balkan War: “Unfortunately,” the caption says, “the united European fire brigade was unable to stop te fire”.

The fact that two cartoonists make the same comparison, illustrates the power of the metaphor. The idea that the world can be set ablaze, is a very old one. I believe that it stems from Stoic ideas about ekpyrosis and Christian and Jewish apocalypticism. Both are, in turn, inspired by Zoroastrian ideas about the end of the world.

The sign of Socrates

 

Yet another chunk of Plutarch: the De Genio Socratis; just in English, since the Greek text, along with a French translation, is already available at Philippe Remacle’s site.

We need not be misled by the title, “On the Genius (Sign, Daemon) of Socrates”; maybe a third of it discusses in what his guardian voice might have consisted, and it is embedded in a typically Greek matrix of (1) moral concerns, (2) mysticism, and (3) murder — this last, the Theban uprising of 379 BC, forming the unlikely setting and in fact the main topic: after a spirited discussion of Buddhist reincarnation, virtue and the paths of the planets thru the Milky Way, the philosophers run off to assassinate the heads of their government.

Samples of (1), (2), and (3), in order:

For if it is a noble act to benefit friends, it is no disgrace to be benefited by them; for the favour, requiring a recipient no less than a giver, needs both to be made perfect in nobility. He who refuses to accept the favour, like the man who refuses to catch a well-directed ball, disgraces it, allowing it to fall to the ground without achieving its end. For what target is so delightful to hit and so painful to miss, as a man deserving kindness at whom we aim a favour? Yet in the case of the target the man who misses has only himself to blame, as the mark is fixed; whereas with favours, the man who declines and moves aside is guilty of an offence against the favour, allowing it to fall short of its goal.

Some of it was of the pure hue of the high seas, while elsewhere the colour was not unmixed, but turbid and like that of a pool. As they crested the surge the islands came back, without, however, returning to their point of departure or completing a circle; but with each new circuit they advanced slightly beyond the old, describing a single spiral in their revolution. The sea containing these was inclined at an angle of somewhat less than eight parts of the whole toward the midmost and largest portion of the surrounding envelope, as he made out; and it had two openings receiving rivers of fire emptying into it across from one another, so that it was forced far back, boiling, and its blue colour was turned to white. All this he viewed with enjoyment of the spectacle. But looking down he saw a great abyss, round, as though a sphere had been cut away; most terrible and deep it was, and filled with a mass of darkness that did not remain at rest, but was agitated and often welled up. From it could be heard innumerable roars and groans of animals, the wailing of innumerable babes, the mingled lamentations of men and women ….

[W]hen Melon, the first to make a move, set out through their midst, his hand on his sword hilt, Cabirichus, the magistrate appointed by lot, caught his arm as he passed and shouted: “Isn’t this Melon, Phyllidas?” Melon, however, disengaged himself, drawing his sword as he did so, and rushing at Archias, who was having trouble getting to his feet, did not slacken his blows until he had killed him. Philippus was wounded by Charon near the neck, and as he defended himself with the goblets set before him, Lysitheüs threw him from his couch to the ground and dispatched him. We endeavoured to quiet Cabirichus, adjuring him not to lend aid to the tyrants but help us set his country free, as his person was sacred and consecrated to the gods in that country’s behalf. But as he was not easily to be won over to the wiser course by an appeal to reason, the wine also having its effect, but was getting to his feet, excited and confused, and couching the spear our magistrates are accustomed to keep always with them, I seized it in the middle and raising it above my head shouted to him to let go and save himself, as he would otherwise be cut down; but Theopompus came up at his right and struck him with his sword, saying: “Lie there with these you toadied to: may you never wear the chaplet when Thebes is free and never sacrifice again to the gods before whom you have invoked so many curses on your country in your many prayers for her enemies.” When Cabirichus had fallen, Theocritus (who was standing near) caught up the sacred spear from the blood, while we dispatched the few servants who had ventured to fight back and locked up the rest ….

There’s still a lot of Plutarch left: right now, only 45% of the Moralia are onsite.

Socrates’ Obscene Last Words

The Silenus-like Socrates (Louvre)

I recently made a remark on this blog that Socrates‘ last words were obscene, to which Mr Steven Saylor replied that he liked me to elaborate on it. I gladly do so, because Mr Saylor is the author of several nice novels (here‘s his website).

The story is told by Plato and can be found in the Phaedo (118a). Socrates has drunk from the poison cup, walks around to make the venom do its work, sits down, and the executioner touches him, telling him that his body will become stiff; when this stiffness will reach his heart, he will pass away.

Now when the stiffness reaches the lower part of Socrates’ torso (ἦτρον), Socrates “uncovers himself”. The now naked part of his body is not mentioned, but there is no reason to assume that it was his head, as nearly all painters represent this scene. (The custom to cover one’s head when one senses one was going to die, was Roman.) With at least one part of his body uncovered, Socrates’ final words are, “We owe a cock to Asclepius”. The Greek word that Plato uses, “ἀλεκτρυών”, has the same meaning as the English “cock”.

Being touched, stiffness, the lower part of the body, uncovering oneself, a cock: Plato offers no less than five signal words, and the listener must have understood what Plato did no say, that the dying Socrates had, to use the medical phrase, a “terminal erection”. Socrates’ last words, fitting for a man whose portrait is modeled on Silenus, were a joke.

Literature

Eva Keuls, The Reign of the Phallus (1985)

Plutarch, Progress in Virtue

Plutarch, bust from the museum of Delphi.

LacusCurtius’ Bill Thayer is now especially occupied with making available the biographies of a long series of nineteenth-century American officers (here), but in the meantime also continues to put online some ancient stuff.

Today’s contribution came, to me, as a pleasant surprise: Plutarch’s essay How We may Become Aware of Our Progress in Virtue, one of my favorite texts from Antiquity. It’s polemical: the Stoics had argued that only wise people can be virtuous, and Plutarch shows that this is absurd. Admittedly, Plutarch’s suggestions on how we realize that we’re becoming more virtuous/wise, is rather commonplace. Yet, it is a good question – perhaps one of the best questions we may expect from philosophers.

Common Errors (31): Pythagoras

Pythagoras (Musei Capitolini, Rome)

One of the most famous anecdotes from Antiquity deals with the philosopher-mathematician Pythagoras (c.570-c.495), who discovered the theorem that is named after him, and sacrificed an ox – or even one hundred oxen – to celebrate this. The joke that ever since the oxen are afraid of scientific progress has been used a bit too often by scientists dismissing critical reviews.

For several reasons, this anecdote is problematic. In the first place, because it is probably one of those unhistorical tales attributed to Pythagoras. Another example is his legendary visit to the ancient Near East, which is referred to for the first time in the second century CE, when Apuleius says that the Samian sage was “believed by some to have been a pupil of Zoroaster” (Apology, 31). In his Refutation of All Heresies (1.2.12), Hippolytus of Rome (early third century CE) implies that he had read this story in a book by Aristoxenus of Tarentum, a contemporary of Alexander the Great. Yet, even if Hippolytus’ is right (which is doubtful), this means that Pythagoras’ eastern trip is unmentioned by earlier authors describing Pythagoras’ life and opinions, even though Herodotus, Plato, and Aristotle had many opportunities to discuss it. The story is almost certainly invented, just like Pythagoras’ visit to India.

The same applies to the theorem that in right-angled triangles the square on the hypothenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the sides containing the right angle. Pythagoras and his pupils were interested in mathematical proof, certainly, but the first to attribute the theorem to the Samian sage is Proclus (412-485), who lived almost one thousand years after Pythagoras (On Euclid I, 426.6-14 [Friedlein]).

A second problem is that the principle was already well-known prior to Pythagoras. Several cuneiform texts from the twenty-first and twentieth century BCE prove the that the ancient Babylonians not only knew that a²+b²=c², but also knew that this principle was generally applicable. There is a difference in the way Babylonians and Greeks proved this rule, but it is possible to overstate Pythagoras’ importance.

Literature

J. Høyrup, ‘The Pythagorean “Rule” and “Theorem” – Mirror of the Relation between Babylonian and Greek Mathematics’ in: J. Renger (red.): Babylon. Focus mesopotamischer Geschichte, Wiege früher Gelehrsamkeit, Mythos in der Moderne (1999).

<Overview of Common Errors>

More Plutarch

Plutarch, bust from the museum of Delphi.

LacusCurtius‘ Bill Thayer continues to add texts documenting Greek intellectual life. To start with, there’s Plutarch‘s Consolation to Apollonius, “into which quotations from earlier authors have been emptied from the sack rather than scattered by hand”, as the author of the introduction to the Loeb edition remarks. His explanation for this odd phenomenon is that this text is the rough draft of a letter. If this is true, we can see how Plutarch really thought – jumping from one quote to another. This man’s thoughts were shaped by classical texts, literally.

The second text is Plutarch’s Dinner of the Seven Sages, which is essentially a fun text comparable to an imaginary meeting of Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Montaigne. What would the Seven Sages have said, had they been able to meet each other? The joke is, of course, that real quotes of the seven sages had to be used.

The third text is Theophrastus’ Weather Signs (Περὶ σημείων): a mixed collection of popular wisdom. I found it more interesting than I had expected. One would have expected something more profound from a pupil of Aristotle.

Plutarch, On the Control of Anger

Plutarch, bust from the museum of Delphi.

Few additions to LacusCurtius‘ steadily growing collection of translations of Plutarch‘s Moralia were better timed than yesterday’s On the Control of Anger. I was really upset, even angry, by the way the Dutch government had announced plans to get out of the economic crisis, and I was surprised at my own anger. Dutch political life never really influences my mood but yesterday, it did. When I was on my way to the place where I had to lecture, I had a feeling that it was sort of obscene to tell the students something about Herodotus now that obviously a time had come to carry daggers under myrtle-branches. Of course, when I entered the classroom and saw my students, those pathetic thoughts vanished into thin air, and when I returned home, I found Plutarch’s essay, which was remarkably suited to the occasion.

The English translation, as I said, is here; and the Greek text, with a French translation, is here. I would like to add that you will like it even when you live in a country where the politicians are still in touch with the people. But I had decided to control my anger, so I just say that you will like it and I will not say the rest.

On Talkativeness

It’s bad.

Plutarch, for a friend

A fictitious 16c portrait of Plutarch

Another “request” item; this time, a real request, from my friend Susan, whose site Elfinspell is a Wunderkammer of mediaevalia and classical Antiquity. So, tracking down a sort-of citation in chapter 5 of Sir John Lubbock’s The Pleasures of Life, another bit of Plutarch: On Brotherly Love; just in English. A French translation is available at Philippe Remacle’s site; neither of us yet have the Greek.

There’s a lot of Plutarch left! Right now, only 40% of the Moralia are onsite (40.2%, to be precise).

Of poisons and pigs

A wild pig, the companion of St. Anthony.

Up on Lacus this morning, a little piece on Poisons and Poisoning among the Romans: it could have, should have, been entertaining, but is instead a pretty bland compendium of the subject in Roman authors, and only the more famous of them at that. Still useful: it collects a number of sources.

These days, though, I’m never too far from Plutarch: and sure enough, here too the fine Italian hand of that author; my only real reason for putting up the poison article was that it’s cited in a footnote to Plutarch’s much more entertaining Gryllus, a charming dialogue between Odysseus and a pig, in which Grunter comes out better, naturally — hey, he’s a sophist. The Greek text and a French translation, as often, can be found on Philippe Remacle’s site.

My illustration — since Jona seems to crave one for every posting — is not quite as irrelevant as it might seem. Once again, Plutarch has written us something that reads rather like the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, the first of whom was St. Anthony, staying in his cave well away from people (sensibly enough) and keeping a pig and a raven for company; the faithfulness of the crow comes in for praise from Plutarch in this dialogue as well. This pig was prominent in the life of the saint, becoming one of Anthony’s two main iconographic attributes; even when saint and inscription have vanished from a medieval depiction, the pig is enough to identify him. This particular bit of fresco is, if I remember correctly, one of those. It’s in Bovara, a little town near Trevi in Umbria, named not after pigs but cows; it seems to have been an important cattle market in Roman times — see my page on the place.

Water or Fire

Plutarch, bust from the museum of Delphi.

From my fingers to God’s ear; I hope He has something better to do — this one is none too good, although here and there it makes up for it in downright weirdness: ps‑Plutarch • Is Water or Fire More Useful? (no Greek online anywhere that I know of, and I didn’t add any, either).

More Plutarch

Plutarch, bust from the museum of Delphi.

Bill copies the translations of Plutarch‘s Moralia faster than even God can read them.  I am glad that they are online now. Today’s installments are:

• On Praising Oneself Inoffensively: a common theme for a rhetorician, which Plutarch treats as a moralist. The Greek text at Philip Remacle’s site is here.
• Precepts of Statecraft: advice for a man who dreams of a career as a local politician. The Greek text of this treatise can be found here.

So many Greek texts… Seeing the speedy expansion of their number, I think Bill will soon have to rebaptize his increasingly inaccurately named website “LacusCurtius. Into the Roman World”, and will name it  “Trophonius’ Cave. Into the Greek World”. 😉

Finishing things, sort of

Plutarch, bust from the museum of Delphi.

When I was a kid I collected stamps. Back in those days, it was still not so far in the past that many countries issued stamps in “series” — a set of stamps with a single design, but each denomination in a different color. The stamp collector was thus very often enticed into trying to get the whole series, an amusing and harmless semi-competitive endeavor.

Well, this compulsive trait has surfaced again from my childhood. I originally had no intention of putting all of Plutarch online, many of his works being concerned with philosophy and Greek stuff, and I’m not fond of either. But little by little — at Attalus there is a page entitled “Plutarch: Moralia — list of translations”; and if anyone out there has been wondering why certain Plutarch items have been going up at Lacus rather than others, it goes far to explain it. I’m filling in the blanks, starting by and large with those texts that don’t appear to be online anywhere at all; and when I’m done with those, I’ll probably wind up by putting up the others as well … to “complete the series”. Right now, in addition to the Lives (complete), Lacus has just short of 30% of the Moralia.

Today’s item is an exception, though, since already up elsewhere, but it was short: On Envy and Hate (envy rather than hate, in fact) with Philippe Remacle’s Greek and French linked, as before. It’s a bland little essay, tells us a bit about envy, but not what to do about it; reminds me of the oft-told story, with various famous American divines in the title rôle, of the preacher who gave a two-hour sermon on Sin: when a parishioner was asked by an absent friend what he’d said, the reply — “He was against it.”

The good Plutarch

Plutarch, bust from the museum of Delphi.

Amyot thought and wrote of Plutarch as “le bon Plutarque”; and I’ve just put online one of the items that gave him that reputation, that made him “the good Plutarch.”

Plutarch can be very good. Good in two senses: (1) as opposed to not very good, unfinished, fragmentary, turgid, pro-forma — a lot of that in the Plutarchean corpus, as previously noted — but also (2) good in the sense of therapeutic for the common man. If philosophy among the Greeks covered disciplines as diverse as metaphysics and meteorology, theories of history and religion, political science and ethics, it also covered psychology; and the essay usually called De vitioso pudore (“On Compliancy” in the Loeb translation) is one of the psychological ones, and apparently breaks new ground: it’s a clear exposition, not previously made by anyone, of a fault common to many of us, and what to do about it. The fault in question is one of my worst, and has caused me endless personal grief; I hope that for once, in addition to doing the donkey work for which LacusCurtius is now famous and being of academic use to serious students of Antiquity, I might pay attention to what I transcribed, and maybe do myself some good. My own title for it — as the Loeb editor’s introduction points out, the Greek word is very difficult to render — is On Not Letting Ourselves Be Bullied. The approach is typical Plutarch: the moral person is the happy person; and this particular essay, in its easy humanity but at the same time its astringent sense of morality, is very reminiscent of the Desert Fathers (or of course, the other way round).

No Greek onsite: again, grec et français chez Philippe Remacle with links to him on each of my pages, under the Greek and French flags as before.