The Dinner of the Seven Wise Men (10-11)

When all had expressed their satisfaction with Thales, Cleodorus said, Asking and answering such questions is all right for kings. But the barbarian who would have Amasis drink up the ocean to do him honour needed the terse retort which Pittacus used to Alyattes, when the latter wrote and sent an overbearing command to the Lesbians. The only answer

he made was to tell Alyattes to eat onions and hot bread. [*]

Periander now entered into the conversation, and said, Nevertheless it is a fact, Cleodorus, that the ancient Greeks also had a habit of propounding such perplexing questions to one another. For we have the story that the most famous poets among the wise men of that time gathered at Chalcis to attend the funeral of Amphidamas. Now Amphidamas was a warrior who had given much trouble to the Eretrians, and had fallen in one of the battles for the possession of the Lelantine plain. But since the verses composed by the poets made the decision a difficult and troublesome matter because they were so evenly matched, and since the repute of the contestants, Homer and Hesiod, caused the judges much perplexity as well as embarrassment, the poets resorted to questionings of this sort, and Homer, as Lesches asserts,[*] propounded this: Tell me, O Muse, of events which never have happened aforetime, Nor in the future shall ever betide, and Hesiod answered quite off-hand: When round Zeus in his tomb rush the steeds with galloping hoof-beats, Crashing car against car, as they eagerly run for a trophy. And for this it is said that he gained the greatest admiration and won the tripod. [*]

But what difference is there, said Cleodorus, between things like this and Eumetis’s riddles?

Perhaps it is not unbecoming for her to amuse herself and to weave these as other girls weave girdles and hair-nets, and to propound them to women, but the idea that men of sense should take them at all seriously is ridiculous.

Eumetis, to judge by her appearance, would have liked to give him an answer, but restrained herself with all modesty, and her face was covered with blushes. But Aesop, as though he would take her part, said, Is it not then even more ridiculous not to be able to solve these? Take, for instance, the one which she propounded to us a few minutes before dinner: Sooth I have seen a man with fire fasten bronze on another. [*] Could you tell me what this is?

No, said Cleodorus, and I don’t want to be told, either.

Yet it is a fact, said Aesop,that nobody knows this more perfectly than you, or does it better, either; and if you deny this, I have cupping-glasses to testify to it.

At this Cleodorus laughed; for of all the physicians of his time he was most given to the use of cuppingglasses, and it was largely owing to him that this form of treatment has come to have such repute.

Mnesiphilus the Athenian, [*] a warm friend and admirer of Solon’s, said, I think it is no more than fair, Periander, that the conversation, like the wine, should not be apportioned on the basis of wealth or rank, but equally to all, as in a democracy, and that

it should be general. Now in what has just been said dealing with dominion and kingdom, we who live under a popular government have no part. Therefore I think that at this time each of you ought to contribute an opinion on the subject of republican government, beginning again with Solon.

It was accordingly agreed to do this, and Solon began by saying, But you, Mnesiphilus, as well as all the rest of the Athenians, have heard the opinion which I hold regarding government. However, if you wish to hear it again now, I think that a State succeeds best, and most effectively perpetuates democracy, in which persons uninjured by a crime, no less than the injured person, prosecute the criminal and get him punished.

Second was Bias, who said that the most excellent democracy was that in which the people stood in as much fear of the law as of a despot.

Following him Thales said that it was the one having citizens neither too rich nor too poor.

After him Anacharsis said that it was the one in which, all else being held in equal esteem, what is better is determined by virtue and what is worse by vice.

Fifth, Cleobulus said that a people was most righteous whose public men dreaded censure more than they dreaded the law.

Sixth, Pittacus said that it was where bad men are not allowed to hold office, and good men are not allowed to refuse it.

Chilon, turning to the other side,[*] declared that the

best government is that which gives greatest heed to laws and least heed to those who talk about them.

Finally, Periander once more concluded the discussion with the decisive remark, that they all seemed to him to approve a democracy which was most like an aristocracy.