Seven Sages of Greece
The Seven Sages or Seven Wise Men was the title given to seven
The Seven Sages
The list of the seven sages given in Plato's Protagoras includes: [1]
- although there was no ancient consensus on this attribution.
- Pittacus of Mytilene (c. 640 BC – c. 568 BC) governed Mytilene (Lesbos). He tried to reduce the power of the nobility and was able to govern with the support of the common people, whom he favoured.
- Bias of Priene (fl. 6th century BC) was a politician and legislator of the 6th century BC.
- Solon of Athens (c. 638 BC – c. 558 BC) was a famous legislator and reformer from Athens, framing the laws that shaped the Athenian democracy.
- Cleobulus, tyrant of Lindos (fl. c. 600 BC), reported as either the grandfather or father-in-law of Thales;
- Myson of Chenae (6th century BC); and
- Chilon of Sparta (fl. 555 BC) was a Spartan politician to whom the militarization of Spartan society was attributed.
Interpretations
In Plato's Protagoras, Socrates says:
There some, both at present and of old, who recognized that
laconic brevity.[1]
The section of the Protagoras in which this passage appears is "elaborately ironical", making it unclear which of its parts may be taken seriously.[8]
Sources and legends
The oldest[10] explicit mention on record of a standard list of seven sages is in Plato's Protagoras, quoted above.
Later tradition ascribed to each sage a pithy saying of his own, but ancient as well as modern scholars have doubted the legitimacy of such ascriptions.[12] A compilation of 147 maxims, inscribed at Delphi, was preserved by the fifth century AD scholar Stobaeus as "Sayings of the Seven Sages",[13] but "the actual authorship of the ... maxims set up on the Delphian temple may be left uncertain. Most likely they were popular proverbs, which tended later to be attributed to particular sages."[14]
In addition to being credited for pithy sayings, the wise men were also apparently famed for practical inventions; in Plato's
According to a number of moralistic stories, there was a golden tripod (or, in some versions of the story, a bowl or cup) which was to be given to the wisest. Allegedly, it passed in turn from one of the seven sages to another, beginning with Thales, until one of them (either Thales or Solon, depending on the story) finally dedicated it to Apollo who was held to be wisest of all.[15]
According to Diogenes, Dicaearchus claimed that the seven "were neither wise men nor philosophers, but merely shrewd men, who had studied legislation."[16] And according to at least one modern scholar, the claim is correct: "With the exception of Thales, no one whose life is contained in [Diogenes'] Book I [i.e. none of the above] has any claim to be styled a philosopher."[17]
See also
- Sage (sophos)
- Saptarishi
References
- ^ a b Protagoras 342e–343b, trans. R.E. Allen.
- ^ Diogenes Laërtius, i. 40
- ^ a b c Diogenes Laërtius, i. 41
- ^ Diogenes Laërtius, i. 13
- ^ Ausonius, The Masque of the Seven Sages
- ^ a b Diogenes Laërtius, i. 42
- ^ Leslie Kurke, Aesopic Conversations: Popular Tradition, Cultural Dialogue, and the Invention of Greek Prose, Princeton University Press, 2010, pp. 131–32, 135.
- ^ p. 156, James Adam, Platonis Protagoras, Cambridge University Press, 1893; p. 83, C.C.W. Taylor, Plato: Protagoras, Oxford University Press, 2002. The words "elaborately ironical" are Adam's.
- Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the Eminent PhilosophersBook IX, Chapter 11, Section 71
- ^ A. Griffiths, "Seven Sages", in Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed.). All the sources are collected in Bruno Snell, Leben und Meinungen der Sieben Weisen. Griechische und lateinische Quellen erläutert und übertragen. Munich, 1971.
- ^ Kirk, Raven, & Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1983, 2nd edition), p. 76, citing Diogenes Laërtius, i. 22.
- ^ H. Parke and D. Wormell, The Delphic Oracle, (Basil Blackwell, 1956), vol. 1, pp. 387–389.
- ^ Kurke, p. 109.
- ^ Parke & Wormell, p. 389.
- ^ Diogenes Laërtius i. 27ff.; R. Martin, "Seven Sages", Encyclopedia of Classical Philosophy (ed. D. Zeyl, 1997), p. 487; Parke & Wormell, pp. 387–388
- ^ Diogenes Laërtius, i. 40.
- ^ p. 42 note a, R. Hicks, Diogenes Laërtius: Lives of Eminent Philosophers, vol. 1, Harvard University Press, 1925.
External links
- Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. Vol. 1:1. Translated by Hicks, Robert Drew(Two volume ed.). Loeb Classical Library.
- Plutarch's The Dinner of the Seven Wise Men, in the Loeb Classical Library.
- Seven Sages of Greece with illustrations and further links.
- Jona Lendering's article Seven Sages includes a chart of various canonical lists.
- Sentences of the Seven Sages
- Fragment of a poem in which the Seven Wise Men were mentioned together, from Oxyrhynchus Papyri