Archilochus

Labor with one's own hands on lowly tasks gives witness, in the toil thus expended on useless things, to one's own indifference to higher things.

No generous youth, from seeing the Zeus at Pisa or the Hera at Argos, longs to be Pheidias or Polycletus, nor to be Anacreon or Philotas or Archilochus, out of pleasure in their poems.

For it does not of necessity follow that, if the work delights you with its grace, the one who wrought it is worthy of your esteem.

Wherefore the spectator is not advantaged by those things at sight of which no ardor for imitation arises in the breast, nor any uplift of the soul arousing zealous impulses to do the like.

When Pericles, after his subjection of Samos, had returned to Athens, he gave honorable burial to those who had fallen in the war, and for the oration which he made, according to the custom, over their tombs, he won the greatest admiration.

But as he came down from the bema, while the rest of the women clasped his hand and fastened wreaths and fillets on his head as though he were some victorious athlete, Elpenesi drew nigh and said, This is admirable in thee, Pericles, and deserving of wreaths, in that thou hast lost us many brave citizens, not in a war with Phoenicians or Medes, like my brother Simon, but in the subversion of an allied and kindred city.

On Elpenesi saying this, Pericles, with a quiet smile, it is said, quoted to her the verse of Archilochus, Thou hast not else, in spite of years, perfumed thyself.

Ion says that he had the most astonishingly great thoughts of himself for having subjected the Samnians, whereas Agamemnon was all of ten years in taking the barbarian city, he had in nine months' time reduced the foremost and most powerful people of Ionia.

Many are obtained from ancient authors prior to the time in which he lived.

Thus, the fable of the hawk and the nightingale is related by Hesiod, the eagle wounded by an arrow winged with its own feathers by Aeschylus, and the fox avenging his wrongs on the eagle by Archilochus.

Many of them are of later origin and are to be traced to the monks of the Middle Ages.

And yet this collection, though thus made up of fables both earlier and later than the era of Aesop, rightfully bears his name, because he composed so large a number, all framed in the same mold and conformed to the same fashion and stamped with the same lineaments, image, and superscription, as to secure to himself the right to be considered the father of Greek fables and the founder of this class of writing, which has ever since borne his name and has secured for him, through all succeeding ages, the position of the first of moralists.

In 1953, Isaiah Berlin published the book The Hedgehog and the Fox.

The book popularized the idea, attributed to the ancient Greek poet Archilochus, that a fox knows many things while a hedgehog knows one important thing.

The dichotomy applies well to the 21st century medical generalist foxes and specialist hedgehogs.

Generalists and specialists care for different patient populations.

And so Philip once said to his son, who, as the wine went round, plucked the strings charmingly and skilfully, "'Art thou not ashamed to pluck the strings so well? It is enough, surely, if a king have leisure to hear others pluck the strings, and he pays great deference to the muses if he be but a spectator of such contests.' Labor with one's own hands on lowly tasks gives witness, in the toil thus expended on useless things, to one's own indifference to higher things.

No generous youth, from seeing the Zeus at Pisa, or the Hera at Argos, longs to be Pheidias or Polycletus, nor to be Anacreon or Philetus or Archilochus, out of pleasure in their poems.

For it does not of necessity follow that, if the work delights you with its grace, the one who wrought it is worthy of your esteem.

Wherefore the spectator is not advantaged by those things at sight of which no ardor for imitation arises in the breast, nor any uplift of the soul arousing zealous impulses to do the like.

When Pericles, after his subjection of Samos, had returned to Athens, he gave honorable burial to those who had fallen in the war, and for the oration which he made, according to the custom, over their tombs, he won the greatest admiration.

But as he came down from the Bema, while the rest of the women clasped his hand and fastened wreaths and fillets on his head, as though he were some victorious athlete, Elpenice drew nigh and said, This is admiral in thee, Pericles, and deserving of wreaths, in that thou hast lost us many brave citizens, not in a war with Phoenicians or Medes, like my brother Simon, but in the subversion of an allied and kindred city.

On Elpenice's saying this, Pericles, with a quiet smile, it is said, quoted to her the verse of Archilochus, Thou hast not else, in spite of years, perfumed thyself.

Aion says that he had the most astonishingly great thoughts of himself for having subjected the Samnians.