Pittacus of Mytilene

I agree with you, said Polemarchus.

Then you and I are prepared to take up arms against anyone who attributes such a saying to Simonides or Bias or Pittacus or any other wise man or seer? I am quite ready to do battle at your side, he said.

Shall I tell you whose I believe the saying to be? Whose? I believe that Periander or Perdiccas or Xerxes or Ismenius the Theban or some other rich and mighty man who had a great opinion of his own power was the first to say that justice is doing good to your friends and harm to your enemies.

Most true, he said.

Draco has left laws, but he adopted them to a constitution which already existed, and there is no peculiarity in them which is worth mentioning except the greatness and severity of the punishments.

Pittacus too was only a lawgiver and not the author of a constitution.

He has a law which is peculiar to him, that if a drunken man do something wrong he shall be more heavily punished than if he were sober.

He looked not to the excuse which might be offered for the drunkard, but only to expediency, for drunken more often than sober people commit acts of violence.

This may be defined generally as an elective tyranny which, like the barbarian monarchy, is legal, but differs from it in not being hereditary.

Sometimes the office was held for life, sometimes for a term of years, or until certain duties had been performed.

For example, the Mitylenians elected Pittacus leader against the exiles, who were headed by Antimenides and Alcaeus the poet; and Alcaeus himself shows in one of his banquet odes that they chose Pittacus tyrant, for he reproaches his fellow-citizens for having made the low-born Pittacus tyrant of the spiritless and ill-fated city, with one voice shouting his praises.

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The Greek school of philosophy had its inception with the seven immortalized thinkers upon whom was first conferred the appellation of Sophos, the wise.

According to Diogenes Laërtius, these were Thales, Solon, Chilon, Pittacus, Bias, Cleobulus, and Periander.

Water was conceived by Thales to be the primal principle or element upon which the earth floated like a ship, and earthquakes were the result of disturbances in this universal sea.

Since Thales was an Ionian, the school perpetuating his tenets became known as the Ionic.

"For," said he, "no man is wise but God alone." Heraclides of Pontus in his De Mortuis makes him say this at Sicyon in conversation with Leon, who was the prince of that city or of Elis: "All too quickly the study was called wisdom, and its professor a sage, to denote his attainment of mental perfection; while the student who took it up was a philosopher or lover of wisdom." Sophists was another name for the wise men, and not only for philosophers but for the poets also: and so Crantus when praising Homer and Hesiod in his Archilochi gives them the title of sophist.

The men who were commonly regarded as sages were the following: Thales, Solon, Periander, Cleobulus, Chilon, Bias, Pittacus.

To these are added Anacharsis the Scythian, Myson of Chen, Pherecydes of Syros, Epimenides the Cretan, and by some even Pisistratus the tyrant.

So much for the sages or wise men.

The answer of the oracle respecting him was as follows, quote, My son of Chen in Oeta, this is he who for wise-heartedness surpasseth thee, end quote.

And it was given in reply to a question put by Anacharsis.

Daimarchus, the Platonist, and Clearchus allege that a bowl was sent by Croesus to Pittacus and began the round of the wise men from him.

The story told by Andron in his work on the tripod is that the Argives offered a tripod as a prize of virtue to the wisest of the Greeks.

Draco has left laws, but he adopted them to a constitution which already existed, and there is no peculiarity in them which is worth mentioning, except the greatness and severity of the punishments.

Pittacus, too, was only a lawgiver and not the author of a constitution.

He has a law which is peculiar to him, that if a drunken man do something wrong, he shall be more heavily punished than if he were sober.

He looked not to the excuse which might be offered for the drunkard, but only to expediency, for drunken more often than sober people commit acts of violence.

This may be defined generally as an elective tyranny which, like the barbarian monarchy, is legal, but differs from it in not being hereditary.

Sometimes the office was held for life, sometimes for a term of years, or until certain duties had been performed.

For example, the Mytileneans elected Pittacus leader against the exiles, who were headed by Antimenidas and Alcaeus the poet.

And Alcaeus himself shows in one of his banquet odes that they chose Pittacus tyrant, for he reproaches his fellow citizens for, quote, having made the lowborn Pittacus tyrant of the spiritless and ill-fated city, with one voice shouting his praises, end quote.

His most attached friends could not forbear blaming him on this occasion.

"You are very foolish," said they to him; "why should you, because there is an odium attached to the empty name of tyrant, refuse a monarchy which would eventually be your legitimate right? Was not Timondus declared king of Euboea? and does not Pittacus at this time reign at Mitylene?" Solon, however, still maintained his ground, and declared publicly that nothing should make him change his opinion.

"Lawful dominion and absolute power are very fine things, to be sure," replied he; "but he who accepts them is surrounded with snares on every side, which once entangled among, he has no chance of escaping." No arguments could prevail upon him to profit by the favorable disposition of the people towards him, and his friends were forced to content themselves with setting him down for a fool or a madman.

Solon, meanwhile, applied himself sedulously to settle the differences which continued to disturb Athens.

Lives of the Ancient Philosophers by Francois Fénelon.

Section 6.

Pittacus.

Pittacus flourished in the forty-second Olympiad and died in the third year of the fifty-second, aged seventy years.

You are very foolish, said they to him.

Why should you, because there is an odium attached to the empty name of tyrant, refuse a monarchy which would eventually be your legitimate right? Was not Timondus declared king of Euboea, and does not Pittacus at this time reign at Medellin? Solon, however, still maintained his ground, and declared publicly that nothing should make him change his opinion.

Lawful dominion and absolute power are very fine things, to be sure, replied he, but he who accepts them is surrounded with snares on every side, which once entangled among, he has no chance of escaping.

No arguments could prevail upon him to profit by the favorable disposition of the people towards him, and his friends were forced to content themselves with setting him down for a fool or a madman.

Lives of the Ancient Philosophers by Francois Fénelon.

Section 6.

Pittacus.

Pittacus flourished in the 42nd Olympiad and died in the 3rd year of the 52nd, aged 70 years.