Part 20

90. The sleeping are workmen (and fellow-workers) in what happens in the world.

91. Understanding is common to all. It is necessary for those who speak with intelligence to hold fast to the common element of all, as a city holds fast to law, and much more strongly. For all human laws are nourished by one which is divine, and it has power so much as it will; and it suffices for all things and more than suffices.

92. And though reason is common, most people live as though they had an understanding peculiar to themselves.

93. With what they most constantly associate, with this they are at variance.

94. It is not meet to act and speak like men asleep.

Cf. Fr. 2 and 90.

95. They that are awake have one world in common, but of the sleeping each turns aside into a world of his own.

96. For human nature has not wisdom, but divine nature has.

97. Man is called a baby by god, even as a child is by man.

The translation is Burnett’s, following the suggestion of Petersen in Hermes xiv. 1879, p. 304.

Fr. 98. And does not Herakleitos, whom you bring forward, say this very thing, that the wisest of men will appear as an ape before God, both in wisdom and in beauty and in all other respects? Fr. 99. You are ignorant, sir, of that fine saying of Herakleitos, that the most beautiful of apes is ugly in comparison with beings of another kind, and the most beautiful of earthen pots is ugly in comparison with maidenkind, as Hippias the wise man says.

100. The people ought to fight for their law as for a wall.

101. Greater deaths gain greater portions.

102. Gods and men honour those slain in battle.

103. Wantonness must be quenched more than a conflagration.

104. It is not good for men to have whatever they want. Disease makes health sweet and good; hunger, satiety; toil, rest.

105. It is hard to contend with passion; for whatever it desires to get it buys at the cost of soul.

106. It is the part of all men to know themselves and to be temperate. 107. To be temperate is the greatest virtue; and it is wisdom to speak the truth and to act according to nature with understanding.

108. It is better to conceal stupidity, but it is an effort in time of relaxation and over the wine.

109. It is better to conceal ignorance than to put it forth into the midst.

110. It is law to obey the counsel of one.

111. For what sense or understanding have they? They follow the bards and employ the crowd as their teacher, not knowing that many are bad and few good. For the very best choose one thing before all others, immortal glory among mortals, while the masses eat their fill like cattle.

112. In Priene was born Bias son of Teutamas, who is of more account than the rest.

Diogenes adds the apothegm ‘most men are bad.’

113. To me one man is ten thousand if he be the best.

114. The Ephesians deserve to be hanged, every one that is a man grown, and the youth to abandon the city, for they cast out Hermodoros the best man among them, saying:—Let no one among us be best, and if one be best, let him be so elsewhere and among others.

115. Dogs also bark at those they do not know.

116. As the result of incredulity (divine things) miss being known.