The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers Diogenes Laërtius (first ebook reader .TXT) 📖

He said that a vine bore three bunches of grapes. The first the bunch of pleasure; the second, that of drunkenness; the third, that of disgust. He also said that he marvelled that among the Greeks, those who were skillful in a thing contend together, but those who have no such skill act as judges of the contest. Being once asked how a person might be made not fond of drinking, he said: “If he always keeps in view the indecorous actions of drunken men.” He used also to say that he marvelled how the Greeks, who make laws against those who behave with insolence, honor Athletae because of their beating one another. When he had been informed that the sides of a ship were four fingers thick, he said, “That those who sailed in one were removed by just that distance from death.” He used to say that oil was a provocative of madness, “because Athletae, when anointed in the oil, attacked one another with mad fury.”

“How is it,” he used to say, “that those who forbid men to speak falsely, tell lies openly in their vintners’ shops?” It was a saying of his, that he “marvelled why the Greeks at the beginning of a banquet drink out of small cups, but when they have drunk a good deal then they turn to large goblets.” And this inscription is on his statues⁠—“Restrain your tongues, your appetites, and your passions.” He was once asked if the flute was known among the Scythians, and he said: “No, nor the vine either.” At another time the question was put to him: which was the safest kind of vessel? and he said: “That which is brought into dock.” He said, too, that the strangest things that he had seen among the Greeks was that “They left the smoke17 in the mountains, and carried the wood down to their cities.” Once, when he was asked which were the more numerous, the living or the dead, he said: “Under which head do you class those who are at sea.” Being reproached by an Athenian for being a Scythian, he said: “Well, my country is a disgrace to me, but you are a disgrace to your country.” When he was asked what there was among men which was both good and bad, he replied: “The tongue.” He used to say: “That it was better to have one friend of great value, than many friends who were good for nothing.” Another saying of his was, that: “The forum was an established place for men to cheat one another, and behave covetously.” Being once insulted by a young man at a drinking party, he said, “O, young man, if now that you are young you cannot bear wine, when you are old you will have to bear water.”

Of things which are of use in life, he is said to have been the inventor of the anchor, and of the potter’s wheel.

The following letter of his is extant:

Anacharsis to Croesus

O king of the Lydians, I am come to the country of the Greeks, in order to become acquainted with their customs and institutions; but I have no need of gold, and shall be quite contented if I return to Scythia a better man than I left it. However I will come to Sardis, as I think it very desirable to become a friend of yours.

Myson, the son of Strymon, as Sosicrates states, quoting Hermippus as his authority, a Chenean by birth, of some Oetaean or Laconian village, is reckoned one of the seven wise men, and they say that his father was tyrant of his country. It is said by some writers that when Anacharsis inquired if anyone was wiser than he, the priestess at Delphi gave the answer which has been already quoted in the life of Thales in reference to Chilo:

I say that Myson the Oetaean sage,
The citizen of Chen, is wiser far
In his deep mind than you.

And that he, having taken a great deal of trouble, came to the village, and found him in the summer season fitting a handle to a plough, and he addressed him, “O Myson, this is not now the season for the plough.” “Indeed,” said he, “it is a capital season for preparing one;” but others say that the words of the oracle are the Etean sage, and they raise the question what the word Etean means. So Parmenides says that it is a borough of Laconia, of which Myson was a native; but Sosicrates, in his Successions says that he was an Etean on his father’s side, and a Chenean by his mother’s. But Euthyphron, the son of Heraclides Ponticus, says that he was a Cretan, for that Etea was a city of Crete.

And Anaxilaus says that he was an Arcadian. Hipponax also mentions him, saying: “And Myson, whom Apollo stated to be the most prudent of all men.” But Aristoxenus, in his Miscellanies, says that his habits were not very different from those of Timon and Apemantus, for that he was a misanthrope. And that accordingly he was one day found in Lacedaemon laughing by himself in a solitary place, and when someone came up to him on a sudden and asked him why he laughed when he was by himself, he said: “For that very reason.” Aristoxenus also says that he was not thought much of, because he was not a native of any city, but only of a village, and that too one of no great note; and according to him, it is on account of this obscurity of his that some people attribute his sayings and doings to Pisistratus the tyrant, but he excepts Plato the philosopher, for he mentions Myson in his Protagoras, placing him among the