Plut. Mor., Seven Wise Men 1 — The Banquet of the Seven Wise Men

Plut. Mor., Seven Wise Men 1 — The Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, Plutarch; served verbatim

No wonder, my friend Nicarchus, to find old truths so disguised, and the words and actions of men so grossly misrepresented and lamely delivered, seeing people are so disposed to give ear and credit to fictions of yesterday’s standing. For there were not merely seven present at that feast, as you were informed; there were more than double the number. I was there myself in person and familiarly acquainted with Periander (my art had gained me his acquaintance); and Thales boarded at my house, at the request and upon the recommendation of Periander. Whoever then gave you that account of our feast did it very badly; it is plain he did it upon hearsay, and that he was not there among us. Now, since we are together and at leisure, and possibly we may not live to find an opportunity so convenient another time, I will (seeing you desire it) give you a faithful account of the whole proceedings at that meeting.

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

contents Plut. Mor., Seven Wise Men 2 →

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

Periander — a life Thales — a life

The Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, Plutarch — translated by Roger Davis (rev. W. W. Goodwin), 1874
Apparatus shelf + pinned Perseus TEI — Plutarch's Morals (the Moralia), ed. William W. Goodwin, five volumes · 'Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by William W. Goodwin, Ph. D.', with an introduction by R. W. Emerson; Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1874 (five volumes; a minority of the TEI transcriptions were keyed from the same publisher's 1878 reprint)
license: public-domain (US: the Goodwin edition is an 1874 Boston publication of a 1684-1694 translation — title pages verified on all five shelf scans at acquisition; Perseus digital editions CC BY-SA 4.0, attribution recorded per ops/corpus-staging/SOURCES.md pattern)