People agree that the soul is alive since it has the ability to make us alive and because “living things” have their name from it [anima, animal]. Virtue, moreover, is little more than a soul keeping itself a certain way. So, virtue is alive. In turn, virtue does something and nothing can do a thing without impetus. So, if a thing has impetus, then it has to be alive, since nothing has impetus unless it is alive.
A response might be that “if virtue is alive, then virtue itself has virtue.” Well, why wouldn’t it!? Just as a wise person does everything through virtue, so to does virtue accomplish its goals through itself. “Therefore, ” people continue, “all the arts are also alive and our thoughts and everything the mind contains with it. So it follows that thousands of living things make their home in the narrows of a person’s heart and that each one of are made up many creatures or have many within us
Animum constat animal esse, cum ipse efficiat, ut simus animalia, cum ab illo animalia nomen hoc traxerint. Virtus autem nihil aliud est quam animus quodammodo se habens; ergo animal est. Deinde virtus agit aliquid; agi autem nihil sine impetu potest. Si impetum habet, qui nulli est nisi animali, animal est. “Si animal est,” inquit, “virtus, habet ipsa virtutem.” Quidni habeat se ipsam? Quomodo 3sapiens omnia per virtutem gerit, sic virtus per se. “Ergo,” inquit, “et omnes artes animalia sunt et omnia, quae cogitamus quaeque mente conplectimur. Sequitur, ut multa millia animalium habitent in his angustiis pectoris, et singuli multa simus animalia aut multa habeamus animalia.”
“When he was at the beginning of adolescence and learned that his father lived in the country because of a terrible marriage…Although when he was recalled from Athens by Nero he was included among his group of friends and even honored with a quaestorship, he still did not remain in his good graces.
Because he took it badly when Nero suddenly left while he was giving a reading for the sake of holding a senate meeting but for no other real reason accept for chilling the reading, he did not later on restrain himself from either words or deeds against the prince, some of which are well-known.
For instance, once when he was in the public restrooms, he followed a rather clear and loud fart to empty his bowels with a half-line written by Nero as the great crowd of those around him fled: “you could believe that it thundered beneath the earth.”
Hic initio adolescentiae, cum ob infestum matrimonium patrem suum ruri agere longissime cognovisset*** Revocatus Athenis a Nerone cohortique amicorum additus atque etiam quaestura honoratus, non tamen permansit in gratia. Siquidem aegre ferens, recitante se subito ac nulla nisi refrigerandi sui causa indicto senatu recessisse, neque verbis adversus principem neque factis exstantibus post haec temperavit, adeo ut quondam in latrinis publicis clariore cum strepitu ventris emissi hemistichium Neronis magna consessorum fuga pronuntiarit: Sub terris tonuisse putes.
“Theognis of Megara, from Megara in Sicily. He lived around the time of the 59th Olympiad [ c/ 540 BCE]. He composed elegy for those who were saved from the Syracusans during the siege, around 2800 elegiac proverbs, a group of elegiac advice addressed to his lover Kyrnos, and other kinds of advisory lines. Theognis is useful because he wrote advice, but in the midst of this are interwoven foul and pederastic erotic lines too and many other things rejected by clean living.”
Theognis: This dude is Megarian, from Megara in Attica. The poet says this himself [783]. Plato didn’t acknowledge this when he claimed in Laws Book 1 that Theognis was from MEgara in Sicily. Not a few have followed Plato in this.”
“This is what Xenophon says about Theognis: “The words of Megarian Theognis: This poet has composed about nothing else except for human excellence and wickedness. This poetry is a treatise on people, as if an equestrian were to write about horses.”
“Tyrtaeus, a son of Arkhembrotos, Laconian or Milesian. An elegiac poet and an aulos player. The story goes that he used his songs to encourage the Spartans while they were fighting the Messenians and he made them stronger. He is really ancient, contemporaneous with the so-called Seven Sages, or even older. He peaked around the time of the 35th Olympiad. He wrote a Constitution for the Spartans and precepts in elegiac poems as a well as martial songs, 5 books worth.
Tyrtaeus: The Spartans swore to either seize Messenia or die trying. When Apollo prophesied that they should take a general from the Athenians, they took the poet Tyrtaeus, a disabled man. He helped them take Messenia by encouraging them to excellence. They razed the city and converted the warriors into Helots.”
“That Tyrtaeus was Athenian, a humble person in his fortune. He was a teacher with a disability who was despised in Athens. Apollo prophesied to the Lakedaimonians to send for him–at that time when they were fighting the Messenians and were in great danger–because he would be just enough for them to figure out what would be advantageous. He ordered them to use him as an advisor.”
the biographical tradition that makes Tyrtaeus foreign to Laconia may be rooted in his poetic dialect. Tyrtaeus–unlike, say, Alcman–does not present a Doric dialect, but instead an Ionian dialect closer to the Panhellenic poetic forms favored by Homer and Hesiod. The stories attached to him can be seen, I think, as a individuated biographical allegory for Panhellenism.
East Greek [Ionian] perfume container shaped like a warrior’s head with helmet. 7th century BCE [?] Rhodes Archaeological Museum
“For when the barbarians and the Greeks were struggling against each other around Troy because of one man’s lack of self-control they endured the most terrible calamities—some in war, some in the return home—and the god assigned a punishment for that single injustice for one thousand and ten years, providing an oracle for the sack of Troy and requesting the journey of maidens from Locris to the temple of Athena in Troy.
[Pythagoras] used to harangue the young men regarding education too, demanding that they consider how strange it would be to judge rational thought the most desirable of all things when one must judge concerning everything else using it, yet people spend no time nor toil in practicing it. And this is when care given to the body is similar to worthless friends in abandoning you quickly; education, however, is like the most good and noble companions who stay by your side right up to death—and, for some, it provides immortal glory after life is over.”
“Lollianos the Ephesian was the first Chair of Rhetoric at Athens and he also stood as governor of the Athenian people as the general of the hoplites. This office in early years was meant for the gathering of supplies and preparations for war; but in those days it was concerned with provisions and the food in the market. When there was a serious protest in the bread-sellers district, and the Athenians were on the verge of stoning Lollianos, Pankrates the Cynic, who in later years studied Philosophy at the Isthmus, stepped forward and said: “Lollianos isn’t a bread-seller, he’s a purveyor of words!” He distracted the Athenians enough that they put down the rocks that were in their hands.
Another time when the grain shipment came from Thessaly and there were no public funds, Lollianos assigned the payment to his students and a heap of money was collected. This seems to be the mark of a clever man and one wise at politics, but his next move shows him just and wise: for he refunded all those who contributed money the amount he charged for his lectures.”
“When he was at the beginning of adolescence and learned that his father lived in the country because of a terrible marriage…Although when he was recalled from Athens by Nero he was included among his group of friends and even honored with a quaestorship, he still did not remain in his good graces.
Because he took it badly when Nero suddenly left while he was giving a reading for the sake of holding a senate meeting but for no other real reason accept for chilling the reading, he did not later on restrain himself from either words or deeds against the prince, some of which are well-known.
For instance, once when he was in the public restrooms, he followed a rather clear and loud fart to empty his bowels with a half-line written by Nero as the great crowd of those around him fled: “you could believe that it thundered beneath the earth.”
Hic initio adolescentiae, cum ob infestum matrimonium patrem suum ruri agere longissime cognovisset*** Revocatus Athenis a Nerone cohortique amicorum additus atque etiam quaestura honoratus, non tamen permansit in gratia. Siquidem aegre ferens, recitante se subito ac nulla nisi refrigerandi sui causa indicto senatu recessisse, neque verbis adversus principem neque factis exstantibus post haec temperavit, adeo ut quondam in latrinis publicis clariore cum strepitu ventris emissi hemistichium Neronis magna consessorum fuga pronuntiarit: Sub terris tonuisse putes.
“Although some philosophers conceal their teachings in obscure phrase, just as poets hide theirs in myth, Porphyry praised clarity as a cure-all, and because he had sampled it in his own experience, he inscribed it in his work and brought it back to daylight.”
“Porphyry’s birthplace was Tyre—the first city of the ancient Phoenicians—and his forebears were not men of low status. He received a fitting education and advanced so far and gained so much that when he became a student of Longinus, he was even an adornment to his teacher in a short time. At that time, Longinus was a kind of living library or a mobile museum. He was tasked with editing ancient authors, as many others before him had been, like Dionysius the Karian who was the most famous of them all. In his Syrian town, Porphyry was at first called Malkhos, a word that can mean king. It was Longinus who named him Porphyry, changing his name to the emblem of royal raiment.”
Alongside Longinus, Porphyry achieved the summit of education—the pinnacle of grammar and even rhetoric, the skill Longinus had achieved. He did not prefer that subject the most, but he learned every type of philosophy thoroughly. For Longinus was by far the best man at that time at everything—the majority of his books are still circulated and people wonder at them. And if anyone criticized an ancient author, his opinion had no strength before Longinus’ judgment completely supported it.”
In his Homeric Questions, Porphyry presents a classic formulation for how to ‘read’ Homer (1.12-14):
“Because I think to best to make sense of Homer through Homer, I usually show by example how he may interpret himself, sometimes in juxtaposition, sometimes in other ways.”
Although this is our earliest extant reference to what is attributed now to the principles of the Alexandrian librarian and editor Aristarchus, the D Scholia to the Iliad (5.385) provide an important testimonium:
“Aristarchus believed it best to make sense of those things that were presented more fantastically by Homer according to the poet’s authority, that we not be overwhelmed by anything outside of the things presented by Homer.”
“When he was at the beginning of adolescence and learned that his father lived in the country because of a terrible marriage…Although when he was recalled from Athens by Nero he was included among his group of friends and even honored with a quaestorship, he still did not remain in his good graces.
Because he took it badly when Nero suddenly left while he was giving a reading for the sake of holding a senate meeting but for no other real reason accept for chilling the reading, he did not later on restrain himself from either words or deeds against the prince, some of which are well-known.
For instance, once when he was in the public restrooms, he followed a rather clear and loud fart to empty his bowels with a half-line written by Nero as the great crowd of those around him fled: “you could believe that it thundered beneath the earth.”
Hic initio adolescentiae, cum ob infestum matrimonium patrem suum ruri agere longissime cognovisset*** Revocatus Athenis a Nerone cohortique amicorum additus atque etiam quaestura honoratus, non tamen permansit in gratia. Siquidem aegre ferens, recitante se subito ac nulla nisi refrigerandi sui causa indicto senatu recessisse, neque verbis adversus principem neque factis exstantibus post haec temperavit, adeo ut quondam in latrinis publicis clariore cum strepitu ventris emissi hemistichium Neronis magna consessorum fuga pronuntiarit: Sub terris tonuisse putes.
“For when the barbarians and the Greeks were struggling against each other around Troy because of one man’s lack of self-control they endured the most terrible calamities—some in war, some in the return home—and the god assigned a punishment for that single injustice for one thousand and ten years, providing an oracle for the sack of Troy and requesting the journey of maidens from Locris to the temple of Athena in Troy.
[Pythagoras] used to harangue the young men regarding education too, demanding that they consider how strange it would be to judge rational thought the most desirable of all things when one must judge concerning everything else using it, yet people spend no time nor toil in practicing it. And this is when care given to the body is similar to worthless friends in abandoning you quickly; education, however, is like the most good and noble companions who stay by your side right up to death—and, for some, it provides immortal glory after life is over.”
![East Greek [Ionian] perfume container shaped like a warrior's head with helmet. Clay/terracota head of warrior with helmet](https://i0.wp.com/sententiaeantiquae.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/East_Greek_plastic_aryballos_-_helmeted_head_of_warrior_-_Rhodos_AM_-_02.jpg?ssl=1)
