Lives of Eminent Philosophers (1.4.76-1.4.80)

Pamphila in the second book of her Memorabilia narrates that, as his son Tyrraeus sat in a barber’s shop in Cyme, a smith killed him with a blow from an axe. When the people of Cyme sent the murderer to Pittacus, he, on learning the story, set him at liberty and declared that It is better to pardon now than to repent later. Heraclitus, however, says

Among the laws which he made is one providing that for any offence committed in a state of intoxication the penalty should be doubled; his object was to discourage drunkenness, wine being abundant in the island. One of his sayings is, It is hard to be good, which is cited by Simonides in this form: Pittacus’s maxim, Truly to become a virtuous man is hard.

Plato also cites him in the Protagoras[*]: Even the gods do not fight against necessity. Again, Office shows the man. Once, when asked what is the best thing, he replied, To do well the work in hand. And, when Croesus inquired what is the best rule, he answered, The rule of the shifting wood, by which he meant the law. He also urged men to win bloodless victories. When the Phocaean said that we must search for a good man, Pittacus rejoined, If you seek too carefully, you will never find him. He answered various inquiries thus: What is agreeable? Time. Obscure? The future. Trustworthy? The earth. Untrustworthy? The sea. It is the part of prudent men, he said, before difficulties arise, to provide against their arising;

and of courageous men to deal with them when they have arisen. Do not announce your plans beforehand; for, if they fail, you will be laughed at. Never reproach any one with a misfortune, for fear of Nemesis. Duly restore what has been entrusted to you. Speak no ill of a friend, nor even of an enemy. Practise piety. Love temperance. Cherish truth, fidelity, skill, cleverness, sociability, carefulness.

Of his songs the most popular is this:

With bow and well-stored quiver

We must march against our foe,

Words of his tongue can no man trust,

For in his heart there is a deceitful thought.

He also wrote poems in elegiac metre, some 600 lines, and a prose work On Laws for the use of the citizens.

He was flourishing about the 42nd Olympiad. He died in the archonship of Aristomenes, in the third year of the 52nd Olympiad,[*] having lived more than seventy years, to a good old age. The inscription on his monument runs thus[*]:

Here holy Lesbos, with a mother’s woe,

Bewails her Pittacus whom death laid low.

There was another Pittacus, a legislator, as is stated by Favorinus in the first book of his Memorabilia, and by Demetrius in his work on Men of the Same Name. He was called the Less.

To return to the Sage: the story goes that a young man took counsel with him about marriage, and received this answer, as given by Callimachus in his Epigrams[*]:

A stranger of Atarneus thus inquired of Pittacus, the son of Hyrrhadius:

Old sire, two offers of marriage are made to me; the one bride is in wealth and birth my equal;

The other is my superior. Which is the better? Come now and advise me which of the two I shall wed.

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So spake he. But Pittacus, raising his staff, an old man’s weapon, said, See there, yonder boys will tell you the whole tale.

The boys were whipping their tops to make them go fast and spinning them in a wide open space.

Follow in their track, said he. So he approached near, and the boys were saying, Keep to your own sphere.

When he heard this, the stranger desisted from aiming at the lordlier match, assenting to the warning of the boys.

And, even as he led home the humble bride, so do you, Dion, keep to your own sphere.