“He also levied a tax of three on every thousand so that people, distressed by these charges, would note also that families of equal wealth whose lives were modest and simple paid less to the public treasury and repent from their behavior.
Both those who paid the taxes because of luxury and those who gave up their luxury because of the taxes were angry to him. For most people believe that hindering the display of their wealth deprives them of it and also that the display comes from their luxuries not their necessities.
This is what they say really surprised Ariston the philosopher, that those who possess superficial excess are thought to be luckier than those who are well-supplied with what is needed and useful.”
“Caesar left certain of his friends the impression that he did not want or desire to live longer because of his worsening health. This is why he ignored what the omens warned and what his friends revealed. Others believe that he dismissed the Spanish guards who accompanied him with swords because he was confident in the Senate’s recent decree and their sworn oath. Others report that he preferred to face the plots that threatened him at once rather than cower before them. There are those who assert that he used to say that his safety should be of more importance to the state than to himself: he had acquired an abundance of power and glory already, but the state, should anything happen to him, would have no rest and would suffer civil war in a worse condition than before.
The following is generally held to be the case, however: his manner of death was scarcely against his desire. For, when he read Xenophon’s account of how in the final days of illness Cyrus gave the plans for his own funeral, Caesar expressed disdain for so slow a death and wished that his own would be sudden and fast. And on the day before he died during dinner conversation at the home of Marcus Lepidus on the topic of the most agreeable end to life, Caesar said he preferred one that was sudden and unexpected.”
Suspicionem Caesar quibusdam suorum reliquit neque uoluisse se diutius uiuere neque curasse quod ualitudine minus prospera uteretur, ideoque et quae religiones monerent et quae renuntiarent amici neglexisse. sunt qui putent, confisum eum nouissimo illo senatus consulto ac iure iurando etiam custodias Hispanorum cum gladiis †adinspectantium se remouisse. [2] alii e diuerso opinantur insidias undique imminentis subire semel quam cauere … solitum ferunt: non tam sua quam rei publicae interesse, uti saluus esset: se iam pridem potentiae gloriaeque abunde adeptum; rem publicam, si quid sibi eueniret, neque quietam fore et aliquanto deteriore condicione ciuilia bella subituram.
illud plane inter omnes fere constitit, talem ei mortem paene ex sententia obtigisse. nam et quondam, cum apud Xenophontem legisset Cyrum ultima ualitudine mandasse quaedam de funere suo, aspernatus tam lentum mortis genus subitam sibi celeremque optauerat; et pridie quam occideretur, in sermone nato super cenam apud Marcum Lepidum, quisnam esset finis uitae commodissimus, repentinum inopinatumque praetulerat.
“These facts are as accurate details about Plato as we are able to gather in our laborious research of the things said about him. Speusippus, an an Athenian son of Eurymedon, took over for him. He was from the deme of Myrrhinos and was the son of Plato’s sister, Pôtônê.
Speusippos was the leader of the school for eight years, and he began after the 108th Olympiad. He had statues of the Graces dedicated in the Museion which Plato built in the Academy. Although he remained an adherent to Plato’s theories, he was not like him at all in his character. For he was quick to anger and easily induced by pleasures. People say that he threw a little dog into a well in a rage and he went to Macedonia to the marriage of Kassander thanks to pleasure.
Two women, Lastheneia of Mantinea and Aksiothea of Phlios, were students of Plato who are said to have heard Speusippus speak. Writing at the time, Dionysus says mockingly: “It is possible to evaluate your wisdom from your Arcadian girl of a student.” And, while Plato made everyone who came to him exempt from tuition, you “send everyone a bill and take money from the willing and unwilling alike!”
“A ruler’s first duty is to save the state itself. This is saved no less in refraining from what is not fitting than from pursuing what is fitting. But the one who shirks or overreaches is no longer a king or a ruler, but in fact becomes a demagogue or a despot. He fills the subjects with hatred and contempt. While the first problem seems to come from being too lenient or a concern for humanity, the second comes from self-regard and harshness.”
“When the comic poets found out about the account, they dropped loads of improprieties on him, making claims about Menippus’ wife, the man who was his friend and lieutenant, and adding things about Pyrilampes and his pet birds. Pyilampes was Perikles’ friend and had been charged with using peacocks to attract the women Perikles was trying to seduce.”
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers [Chrysippus] 7.7
“If someone is in Megara he is not in Athens. If a body is in Megara there is nobody in Athens. If you say something, then something moves through your mouth. So, you say “wagon”. And then a wagon moves through your mouth. Also, if you did not lose anything, then you have it. You never lost horns, so you have horns.” Some say Euboulides said this.”
“Again, the one who is asked whether he has horns is not so foolish as to search his own brow nor also so incompetent or limited that you may persuade him that he doesn’t know this with that most sophisticated logic. These kinds of things deceive without harm in the same way as the dice and cup of a juggler in which the deception itself entertains me. But explain how the trick works, and I lose my interest. I say that same thing about these word tricks, for by what name might I better call sophistries? They are harmless if you don’t understand them, and useless if you do.”
Ceterum qui interrogatur, an cornua habeat, non est tam stultus, ut frontem suam temptet, nec rursus tam ineptus aut hebes, ut ne sciat tu illi subtilissima collectione persuaseris. Sic ista sine noxa decipiunt, quomodo praestigiatorum acetabula et calculi, in quibus me fallacia ipsa delectat. Effice, ut quomodo fiat intellegam; perdidi usum. Idem de istis captionibus dico; quo enim nomine potius sophismata appellem? Nec ignoranti nocent nec scientem iuvant.
Bronze head of a Philosopher from a shipwreck near Antikythera
“The people were so elated at his death, that at its first announcement some went running around shouting, “Tiberius to the Tiber” and others appealed to the Earth mother and the Ghosts to give the dead man no home except among the punished. Others threatened his corpse with a hook and the Mourning Stairs, angered by the memory of new insult added to ancient injury.
This is because the Senate had recently decreed that executions should be delayed for 10 days and as it turned out some of them were to be killed when the news of Tiberius’ death broke. The poor souls who begged for public protection had no one to approach or appeal to because Gaius was gone; and the jailors strangled them and threw them out on the Mourning Stairs because they were afraid to do anything against the law. Their hatred grew greater since the tyrant’s brutality persisted after death”
Morte eius ita laetatus est populus, ut ad primum nuntium discurrentes pars: “Tiberium in Tiberim!” clamitarent, pars Terram matrem deosque Manes orarent, ne mortuo sedem ullam nisi inter impios darent, alii uncum et Gemonias cadaveri minarentur, exacerbati super memoriam pristinae crudelitatis etiam recenti atrocitate. Nam cum senatus consulto cautum esset, ut poena damnatorum in decimum semper diem differretur, forte accidit ut quorundam supplicii dies is esset, quo nuntiatum de Tiberio erat. Hos implorantis hominum fidem, quia absente adhuc Gaio nemo exstabat qui adiri interpellarique posset, custodes, ne quid adversus constitutum facerent, strangulaverunt abieceruntque in Gemonias. Crevit igitur invidia, quasi etiam post mortem tyranni saevitia permanente.
Peter Paul Rubens, “Tiberius and his wife Vipsania Agrippina” 1577
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) wrote the autobiographical Reveries of a Solitary Walker in that late period of life in which, Solon says,
“A man is still able, but his tongue and his judgment grow soft where things requiring great skill are concerned.”
On one of the walks recounted in the book, Rousseau pondered Solon’s famous remark
“I’m growing old forever learning a great many things.”
After reflecting on the line and its implications, Rousseau concluded that learning–or at least learning certain things–at a late age was in fact a waste of time.
He had this to say:
Solon often repeated this verse in his old age. There’s a sense in which I too can say it in mine. But it is a gloomy science indeed which I’ve acquired in twenty years of experience. Ignorance is preferable to it. Adversity is, without doubt, a great master, but it charges a lot for its lessons, and often the benefit that we derive isn’t worth the cost. What’s more, before we’ve gotten all that’s to be had from the belated lessons, the occasion to use it has passed. Youth is the time to learn wisdom; old age is the time to put it into practice. Experience always teaches, I admit that. But it’s only beneficial in the space ahead of us. Is it really the time, just when we’re about to die, to learn how we ought to live?
Rousseau, les Reveries du Promeneur Solitaire (Troisieme Promenade)
Solon répétoit souvent ce vers dans sa vieillesse. Il a un sens dans
lequel je pourrois le dire aussi dans la mienne; mais c’est une bien
triste science que celle que depuis vingt ans l’expérience m’a fait
acquérir: l’ignorance est encore préférable. L’adversité sans doute
est un grand maître; mais ce maître fait payer cher ses leçons, et
souvent le profit qu’on en retire ne vaut pas le prix qu’elles ont
coûté. D’ailleurs, avant qu’on ait obtenu tout cet acquis par des
leçons si tardives, l’à-propos d’en user se passe. La jeunesse est le
temps d’étudier la sagesse; la vieillesse est le temps de la pratiquer.
L’expérience instruit toujours, je l’avoue; mais elle ne profite que
pour l’espace qu’on a devant soi. Est-il temps, au moment qu’il faut
mourir, d’apprendre comment on auroit dû vivre?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, composer of the most popular opera of 18th century France (Le Devin du Village) and author of the period’s best selling novel (Julie ou la Nouvelle Heloise).
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 9.11 on Pyrrho
“But Philo the Athenian, who was his friend, used to say that he often called to mind Democritus and then Homer, wondering at him and constantly saying “just as the generation of leaves so are the generations of men”. And he liked the fact that Homer compared human beings to wasps, flies and birds. He also used to add these lines: “But, friend, die too: why do you mourn like this? / Patroklos also died and he was much better than you.” He would recite that along with all the passages which attested to the uncertain and empty pursuits, the childish simplicity of humankind.
Poseidonios also passes down a certain story like this about him. When his shipmates were exceedingly anxious because of a storm, he was calm and unshaken in his spirit. After he pointed to a piglet on the boat who was eating, he said that it was right for a wise person to settle into such an untroubled state.”
“Some people blame these traits on Marcus Cato’s cheapness; but others believe he is a model for his rectitude and wisdom, since he counterbalanced the excess of everyone else. But I believe that how he used slaves up as if they were pack animals and then driving them away and selling them when they were old is the mark of a deeply cruel character—one that believes that human beings have nothing in common except for need.
But we know that kindness occupies more territory than justice. For we use law and justice only in reference to human beings, but it is kindness and charity that at times pour out from a gentle character even for the unthinking animals just as water from a full spring. Kind people take care of horses even when they are old and dogs too—not just when they are puppies, but when their old age requires care.”
