Among wise men, I maintain, the most praiseworthy are they who not only have spoken cleverly
on their particular subjects, but have made their
assertions good by doing things to match them.
Take doctors, for instance: a man of sense, on falling
ill, does not send for those who can talk about their
profession best, but for those who have trained
themselves to accomplish something in it. Likewise a
musician who can himself play the lyre and the cithara
is better, surely, than one who simply has a good ear
for rhythm and harmony. And why need I tell you
that the generals who have been rightly judged’ the
best were good not only at marshalling their forces
and addressing them, but at heading charges and at
doughty deeds? Such, we know, were Agamemnon
and Achilles of old, Alexander and Pyrrhus more
recently.

 
Why have I said all this? It was not out of an
ill-timed desire to air my knowledge of history that
I brought it up, but because the same. thing is true
of engineers—we ought to admire those who, though
famous for knowledge, have yet left to later generations reminders and proofs of their practical skill,
for men trained in words alone would better be called


 

wiseacres than wise. Such an engineer we are told,
was Archimedes, and also Sostratus of Cnidus, The
latter took Memphis for Ptolemy without a siege by
turning the river aside and dividing it; the former
burned the ships of the enemy by means of his
science. And before their time Thales of Miletus,
who had promised Croesus to set his army across the
Halys dryshod, thanks to his ingenuity brought the
river round behind the camp in a single night.
Yet he was not an engineer: he was wise, however, and very able at devising plans and grasping
problems. . As for the case of Epeius, it is prehistoric:
he is said not only to have made the wooden horse
for the Achaeans but to have gone into it along
with them.