The following quote has recently been attributed to Aristotle. As anyone who has read even a little bit by Aristotle can attest, this is about as far away from an Aristotelian sentiment as you can get.
Oh, Town and Country magazine, you fell for it. I get it. The quotation sounds kind of cool. It is inspiring in that insipid, soul-numbing way motivational posters start out as ‘neat’ and end up as part of a fevered nightmare.
As recently as 2012, this quotation was attributed anonymous (and this appears frequently). So, this one must have jumped attribution quite recently. Please, contact your local office of common sense and decency and let them know we cannot stand for this.
Here’s a real Aristotle quotation about snow:
Aristotle, Prior Analytics, 12b
“To be hot is the nature of fire and snow’s nature is white”
“Apollodorus the Athenian in his Summary of Beliefs, because he wants to demonstrate that the works of Epicurus were written with personal force and were prepared with far fewer quotations than the books of Chrysippos, says in this very wording: “if the books of [Chrysippos] were scrubbed of all the superfluous quotations, only empty paper would be left to him.”
So much for Apollodorus. The old women who used to sit next to [Chrysippos], according to Diocles, used to claim that he wrote 500 lines each day. Hekatôn reports that he turned to philosophy because the property left to him by his father was confiscated to the royal treasury.”
An old friend of mine reached out about the quote posted below and asked if it is really old Marky A.
This is a translation of Marcus Aurelius by Gregory Hays
And here’s the Loeb translation by C. R. Haines
Here’s my take:
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.33
“What then? You will wait either for being snuffed out or transformed pleasantly. But until that right moment comes [the end of life] what is there for us? What else but honoring the gods and singing their praise, to do well for people, and to “endure” them and “be restrained and for however much else is within the bounds of flesh and breath, we must remember that they are not really yours or under your power.”
Let’s concede that the Daily Stoic choice takes it out of context and that the translation gives no sense that the Aurelius passage is quoting (and perhaps even misusing) famous dicta of stoic philosophy. Let’s also put aside the fact that the Stoic is bandying about a translation without crediting the translator or acknowledging that this thought has been thrice mediated from one language to another. (And this mediation is shaped in turn by cultural presuppositions.)
Let’s just look at the Greek “ἀνέχεσθαι” αὐτῶν καὶ “ἀπέχεσθαι can mean to “hold back from” but more typically means endure. So, here, “tolerate” is just fine but in Hays’ English maxim it comes off as a bit more benevolent, when in Epictetus (Arrian 3.10) it is more to “submit” or “withstand”, to not react to someone else’s provocation. The verb ἀπέχεσθαι means to be strict only insofar as it means to refrain and in the works of Epictetus generally means restraining from pleasure or desire.
Let me make something clear: this is not a knock against the translator who made choices based on a context to render something in a certain way. My main quibble is presenting this specific translation as authoritatively Aurelius.
So, on my list of ratings for fake quotations, I rate this as “Cylon-Helen Fake“: “Just as Herodotus and Stesichorus report that ‘real’ Helen was replaced with a near-exact copy for the ten years of the Trojan War, so too some quotations are transformed through translation (Latin into Greek, Greek into Latin; or into Modern languages). The intervention of an outside force changes the cultural status of the words.”
Here’s where I will get a bit meaner. This choice of translation is likely popular online because it adheres to a particularly “muscular” or masculine view of stoicism that bubbles up in certain quarters. Being strict and refraining from something are not the same and neither is, to put this stoically, an unmixed virtue. This is not a Stoic value, per se, but the value of an internet meme for stoic cos-play.
One of the things that is really hard to handle about certain forms of modern stoicism is that it overlooks (1) that the biggest stoics (Seneca and Aurelius) were fabulous rich people with a lot of power and many thousands of people making it possible for them to have easy lives “to be strict” in. It is no accident that Stoicism is popular among the technorich of the Modern age: its Senecan and Aurelian form allows you to focus on yourself and rewards self-restraint and ‘negative’ virtues over notions of responsibility egalitarianism.
One of the reasons we started this site almost 10 years ago was that the internet was full of unsourced, low quality translations. We have, of course, ended up contributing to the mess, but we should still strive to (1) provide the original languages of the things we quote and (2) provide the context or access to the context if it is possible.
Let me be clear, this is not a screed against Stoicism, but a reminder that ancient philosophical schools only exist in dialogue with one another. Modern meme-Philosophy also gets to pick and choose, ignoring the fact that someone like Seneca spent years–even decades–studying many forms of philosophy and can be found in his letters and treatises espousing values from many different traditions. Roman philosophers–especially those we call stoics–were eclectics who learned and practiced multiple disciplines.
But that would be too hard today. Unless, of course, you rotate in some Epicurus and Diogenes quotes with your Stoic memes.
“A farmer’s child was roasting snails. When he heard them trilling as they cooked, he said, “Most pathetic creatures, You are singing as your homes burn?”
This story makes it clear that everything done at the wrong time should be mocked.”
This looks like it has jumped to a proverb in Modern Greek which attributes it to Thucydides and changes the person of the verb, rendering it. “you sing while your homes are burning.” [«Των οικιών ημών εμπιπραμένων, ημείς άδομεν»]. I retweeted thinking it did not sound much like the ancient historian, but just had to check for it.
So, I think this qualifies on my rating scale as Delphian Graffiti Fake: It has antiquity, but has been reassigned for authority in a new context. I mean, really, who wants to cite Aesop and his animals when we have the gravity of Thucydides. And, let’s be honest, this is a good line for any age, but especially apt for ours.
A reader left a comment asking for an investigation of this one. Let’s not beat around the Athenian bush on this one: this is fake, like, really fake.
This seems only recently to have made the leap to Aristotle. It does not seem to be attributed to him in any books, but it appears in Great Thoughts from Master Minds. 1884/1907 by a certain Rev. Haigh.
Even though this seems like a rather anodyne statement, I think it is really un-Aristotelian and anti-ancient philosophy and general. The notion that you can be for the most part good, but your character is undermined by a single thing is about sin. This is totally Christian and completely not Aristotle.
Here’s some Nicomachaean Ethics as a cleanse 1105b
“It is therefore well said that a person becomes just by doing just things and prudent from practicing wisdom. And, no one could ever approach being good without doing these things. But many who do not practice them flee to argument and believe that they are practicing philosophy and that they will become serious men in this way. They act the way sick people do who listen to their doctors seriously and then do nothing of what they were prescribed. Just as these patients will not end up healthy from treating their body in this way, so most people won’t change their soul with such philosophy.”
“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.
So, a twitter correspondent (.@stustin) asked me about this one:
This is so fake that it has been debunked by Snopes and Politifact, which traced the simplistic sentiment to a goodreads account in 2008. A simple google books search shows that the misattribution made the leap to books a few years ago and seems to be growing like a virus or cancer.
On my fake quotation scale, this stands somewhere between Peisistratos Fake–because it has been obviously manufactured–and Racist Fake because it is used in political debates by those trying to prevaricate when their interlocutors mention the moral turpitude of someone like a Supreme Court Justice who likes beer and putting his genitals in people’s faces. This is just another one of those lame, nitpicking logic-memes which put on a false mantle of antiquity for authority.
Socrates does talk a lot about slander, but he is usually worried about how slander prejudices audiences against speakers before a debate even happens (he says this in the Apology). In this case, the concern is the opposite of that in the spurious quotation: the quotation fears that debate devolves into name-calling and away from fact whereas Socrates is actually worried that previous name-calling and unquestioned assumptions makes it impossible for his audiences to apprehend the facts of a case.
Plato, Apology 19a
“Well, so be it. I need to defend myself, Athenians, and I need to try to take from you the slander you have absorbed over so long a period in such little time.”
“A farmer’s child was roasting snails. When he heard them trilling as they cooked, he said, “Most pathetic creatures, You are singing as your homes burn?”
This story makes it clear that everything done at the wrong time should be mocked.”
This looks like it has jumped to a proverb in Modern Greek which attributes it to Thucydides and changes the person of the verb, rendering it. “you sing while your homes are burning.” [«Των οικιών ημών εμπιπραμένων, ημείς άδομεν»]. I retweeted it earlier today thinking it did not sound much like the ancient historian, but just had to check for it.
So, I think this qualifies on my rating scale as Delphian Graffiti Fake: It has antiquity, but has been reassigned for authority in a new context. I mean, really, who wants to cite Aesop and his animals when we have the gravity of Thucydides. And, let’s be honest, this is a good line for any age, but especially apt for ours.
“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.
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