ἱστορίαι Historiai
D.L. 5.39-41 Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Volume I (Books I-V), Diogenes Laertius; served verbatim
an excess of cleverness, whereas the other was naturally backward. He is said to have become the owner of a garden of his own after Aristotle's death, through the intervention of his friend Demetrius of Phalerum. There are pithy sayings of his in circulation as follows : ‘‘ An unbridled horse, ” he said, “ought to be trusted sooner than a badly-arranged discourse.” ‘To some one who never opened his lips at a banquet he remarked : ** Yours is a wise course for an ignoramus, but in an educated man it is sheer folly.”” He used constantly to say that in our expenditure the item that costs most is time. He died at the age of eighty-five, not long after he had relinquished his labours. My verses upon him are these @: Not in vain was the word spoken to one of human kind, “ Sjacken the bow of wisdom and it breaks.” Of a truth, so long as Theophrastus laboured he was sound of limb, but when released from toil his limbs failed him and he died. It is said that his disciples asked him if he had any last message for them, to which he replied : “ Nothing else but this, that many of the pleasures which life boasts are but in the seeming. For when we are just beginning to live, lo! we die. Nothing then is so unprofitable as the love of glory. Farewell, and may you be happy. Either drop my doctrine, which involves a world of labour, or stand forth its worthy champions, for you will win great glory. Life holds more disappointment than advantage. But, as I can no longer discuss what we ought to do, do you go on with the inquiry into right conduct.”

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

← D.L. 5.37-39 contents D.L. 5.41-48 →

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)