ἱστορίαι Historiai
D.L. 1.70-72 Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Volume I (Books I-V), Diogenes Laertius; served verbatim
tion. Do not aim at impossibilities. Let no one see youina hurry. Gesticulation in speaking should _ be avoided as a mark of insanity. Obey the laws. Be restful. Of his songs the most popular is the following : “ By the whetstone gold is tried, giving manifest proof; and by gold is the mind of good and evil men brought to the test.” He is reported to have said in his old age that he was not aware of having ever broken the law throughout his life ; but on one point he was not quite clear. In a suit in which a friend of his was concerned he himself pronounced sentence according to the law, but he persuaded his colleague who was his friend to acquit the accused, in order at once to maintain the law and yet not to lose his friend. He became very famous in Greece by his warning about the island of Cythera off the Laconian coast. For, becoming acquainted with the nature of the island, he exclaimed: ‘‘ Would it had never been placed there, or else had been sunk in the depths of the sea.” And this was a wise warning; for Demaratus, when an exile from Sparta, advised Xerxes to anchor his fleet off the island; and if Xerxes had taken the advice Greece would have been conquered. Later, in the Peloponnesian war, Nicias reduced the island and placed an Athenian garrison there, and did the Lacedaemonians much mischief. He was a man of few words; hence Aristagoras of Miletus calls this style of speaking Chilonean. . . . _ is of Branchus, founder of the temple at Branchidae. Chilon was an old man about the 52nd Olympiad, _ when Aesop the fabulist was flourishing. According

The Greek stands ready in the workroom; the English is served. Both faces will read together.

← D.L. 1.68-70 contents D.L. 1.72-74 →

Filed here — the addresses this episode attests; counted by the house’s first pass

Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Volume I (Books I-V), Diogenes Laertius — translated by R. D. Hicks, 1925
Apparatus shelf — Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, vol. I (R. D. Hicks translation, Loeb L184) · R. D. Hicks, Loeb Classical Library, London: William Heinemann / New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, MCMXXV (1925)
license: public-domain (US: published 1925, pre-1930 — the MCMXXV title page verified by the 2026-07-08 acquisition lane, pin in ops/sources/MANIFEST.md; only the English rectos are served, Hicks's translation)