It is true that any statement about the ancient world needs many more profound qualifications and knowledge. Thus the situation of Greek women is not the same as that of Roman women, and this in the first centuries than  at the end of the Republic or during the Empire, when their social and legal "status" has undergone important modifications.

It is even striking that while socially her relevant role is  matron of the house, we speak about the free women of the Roman noble families, instead in the Greek-Roman "pantheon" the goddesses, demigoddesses, heroines have an important presence, and if Zeus-Jupiter responds to the paternalistic paradigm of the father-god, the virginal Artemis or Diana represents the autonomous, free and breakthrough woman with the dominant patriarchal system.

Also in art in general and in funeral epigraphy, for example, women are well present and represented.

I mean by all this that any statement about the ancient world, which we usually see with the eyes of the present, needs nuances and fine analysis.

But I do not want to refer to it but to a very current issue, that of sexism in language.

Both Greek and Latin languages are flexible, very flexible languages; that is to say, the words admit diverse forms, generally different endings to express the diverse "grammatical accidents".

We say that Spanish, like many other languages today, is derived from Latin. We could also say that these languages are but a Latin evolved over the years subjected to the influence of the substrate of other languages and various factors. This relationship is appreciated by those who are not specialists in languages, especially in the lexicon or set of words, but also in syntactic structures, despite variations. There are some other less obvious and less expected issues.

Thus for example in Latin there are two grammatical numbers, singular and plural and two there are also in Spanish; (in fact, there remains in Latin a remnant of a third number called dual which is applied to beings or objects that generally appear in pairs, such as two hands, two eyes, two ears, etc.).

In Latin there are three genders, masculine, feminine and neutral. In Spanish the neutral has disappeared, there is only one rest in the article "lo", in the pronoun "ello (it)", etc. So  the masculine and the feminine are only operative.

However, the use of grammatical genders in Spanish has generated, in addition to purely linguistic questions, others of a social and even political kin when "grammatical gender" is identified with "physical sex".

It turns out that language, like other human activities, operates with an invisible "media economy" principle and thus generally it uses substantive or "masculine" adjectives to refer to both men and women. So when we affirm "man is a being endowed with intelligence", we naturally refer to "man and woman", without excluding the latter. In more linguistic terms, we would say that Spanish language "marks" the feminine term, but not the masculine one, which, because it is not "marked", can be used to refer to both genders.

In that has naturally influenced the very historical formation of society, aptly defined as "patriarchal" given the preponderant role played in civilian and social life by the "pater", the father, and not the mother, relegated generally and for many years to the interior of the home and her functions.

But the roles of men and women in society have changed markedly in a process of equalization that has certainly not ended. This process thas not been kind, but has provoked great controversy among "patriarchal", "sexist" people in popular terminology, and "feminists".

This process of equalization has spread to all sectors of society. Thus in democratic countries equality has been achieved in laws, which no longer cover discrimination in the enjoyment of rights based on the gender or sex of individuals. Real equalization in society has obviously not yet been achieved and there is still a great way to go. For example, laws regulating labor and labor relations are not discriminatory, but in our country it is a sad reality that women often charge a lower wage than men, even when they do the same work.

Well, some people consider that language, in which some masculine gender terms are used to refer to masculine and feminine beings together, is discriminatory and "sexist", that is, it exalts gender or masculine sex for the detriment of feminine. Thus language is also a field of confrontation between those who cling to traditional uses and those who demand a renewal that does not hide the reality that approximately half of the human beings which  inhabit the planet earth are women.

The solutions that have been proposed are diverse and their general acceptance is nothing short of impossible. Thus it is proposed to replace the terms of specific gender with others of more abstract meaning, for example using "humanity" instead of "men", or use indistinct or alternatively one or the other, so we would sometimes say "men" and other "women"; "The boys" and "the girls"; or simultaneously use the two, thus "men and women",  "boys and girls", etc.

This question of sexist language is not definitively resolved, despite the normative efforts of some institutions. Moreover, the issue sometimes provokes controversies, such as recently emerged between two academics of  Royal Spanish Academy that has resulted in several articles of replicas and counter-replies loaded with ad hominem arguments.

At this point in the article, more than one reader will ask the story or reason of all this exhibition in a blog dedicated to the ancient Greek-Roman world?

Well, I can not say that this question of the "sexist" use of language arose in the ancient world, but there is evidence as old as the Greek Iliad in which the male and the female term are simultaneously specified and used simultaneously. It was precisely a recent rereading of the Iliad that caused me to stumble with verse 350 of Book XV and that motivated this article with such a long introduction.

Homer says in Illiad, XV, 346-351

And Hector shouted aloud, and called to the Trojans:“Speed ye against the ships, and let be the blood-stained spoils. Whomsoever I shall mark holding aloof from the ships on the further side, on the very spot shall I devise his death, nor shall his  kinsmen and kinswomen give him his due meed of fire in death, but the dogs shall rend him in front of our city.”  (English Translation by A.T. Murray, Ph.D.Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 19)

In this occasion I will also cite the text in Greek so that it can be verified by the reader that the use of " male and female relatives, kinsmen and kinswomen" is not merely an effect of translation, but it is seen in the original: γνωτοί and γνωταί are the masculine form and female of the same word:

Ἕκτωρ δὲ Τρώεσσιν ἐκέκλετο μακρὸν ἀΰσας
νηυσὶν ἐπισσεύεσθαι, ἐᾶν δ' ἔναρα βροτόεντα·
ὃν δ' ἂν ἐγὼν ἀπάνευθε νεῶν ἑτέρωθι νοήσω,
αὐτοῦ οἱ θάνατον μητίσομαι, οὐδέ νυ τόν γε
γνωτοί τε γνωταί τε πυρὸς λελάχωσι θανόντα,   
ἀλλὰ κύνες ἐρύουσι πρὸ ἄστεος ἡμετέροιο.

Let us now turn to this other example of Pausanias (eight hundred years separate it from the previous text), which in his Description of Greece, when speaking about Delphi, referring to Homer and Pindarus and to the source Casotide, says in 10: 24,2:

So these men wrote what I have said, and you can see a bronze statue of Homer on a slab, and read the oracle that they say Homer received:
—“Blessed and unhappy, for to be both wast thou born.
Thou seekest thy father-land; but no father-land hast thou, only a mother-land.
The island of Ios is the father-land of thy mother, which will receive thee
When thou hast died; but be on thy guard against the riddle of the young children.”

The inhabitants of Ios point to Homer's tomb in the island, and in another part to that of Clymene, who was, they say, the mother of Homer.
But the Cyprians, who also claim Homer as their own, say that Themisto, one of their native women, was the mother of Homer, and that Euclus foretold the birth of Homer in the following verses:
—“And then in sea-girt Cyprus there will be a mighty singer,
Whom Themisto, lady fair, shall bear in the fields, A man of renown, far from rich Salamis.
Leaving Cyprus, tossed and wetted by the waves,
The first and only poet to sing of the woes of spacious Greece,
For ever shall he be deathless and ageless.”

These things I have heard, and I have read the oracles, but express no private opinion about either the age or date of Homer. (Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918).

I have already mentioned something about this issue in http://www.antiquitatem.com/en/eucation-of-the-greek-girl-plato

But now I want to highlight a curious and significant fact.

In a special and repeated way the masculine / feminine doublet was sometimes used in the Roman legislative world. There are times when the legislator wants to make it clear linguistically that he refers to "men and women" in a non-discriminatory way. The Roman jurist has opted  the solution of using together the masculine terms and the corresponding feminine in resemblance to some current uses.

I have also found it in a recent visit to the National Archaeological Museum of Madrid, in the known as the "Lex Salpensana", which regulates the citizenship of the town of Salpensa, now Facialcázar, city close to Utrera, in the Hispanic Bética of the time Imperial of Domitian.

It is known that the "Roman Law" is the set of laws that exclusively regulate the life of the "Roman citizen". However, not all inhabitants of the Roman Empire are "citizens" (cives), some of them are related but not Roman citizens, like the "latini", others are foreign friends, but not citizens, "peregrini", pilgrims, whose relations with the Romans is determined by ius gentium; many of them are slaves, that is, men without rights. Each group has its own rights, until in 212 with the so-called Constitutio Antoniniana the Emperor Caracalla considers Roman citizens all free inhabitants of the empire, including those of Hispania, of course.

In a similar way, the Romans  assimilate the territories and cities that they  conquer  and are creating many others with different legal entities, such as "colonies" or "municipia",  "municipalities." Moreover, the different legal qualifications are applied in terms of the quality of their citizens and their assimilation to Rome.

The emperor Titus Flavius Domitianus (51 – 96) assimilated since the year 73 the Hispanic cities to the condition of "Latin cities"; thus he promulgated and granted between the years 81 and 84  the municipality of Salpensa a law with which he granted the "ius Latii", the law of Lazio, the Latin Law, of inferior category and less beneficial than the "ius romanum". Of this law we have only 9 chapters of a plate of the several of which it should have, according to other similar laws, like the Lex Flavia Malacitana, and the Lex Irnitana.

On these laws and their meaning I must write an article at the time, but today I will confine myself to the verification of that linguistic precision which differentiates between the beings of gender and the masculine and feminine sex in the written language, in this case of a law . Of course he does not do it because it considers that the generalist formula is sexist, but for reasons of juridical precision; but who would tell us that this formula that has served and serves as a confrontation when not as exercises of dubious humor, who would tell us that he had already settled in a text two thousand years ago?

National Archaeological Museum of Madrid

I reproduce only the five rubrics in which these uses appear in Latin and in their translation, leaving for another occasion the comment and meaning, not without difficulty.  I use the meritorious  translation of  E. G.  Hardy, in his work Three Spanish Charters and other documents. The Lawbook Exchange Ltd. Clark. New Jersey)

Note: The word "rubric" is derived from the Latin ruber, rubra, rubrum, meaning "red". According The dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy, in its first two meanings, it means:

1. Trait or set of traits, always performed in the same way, which usually are put on the signature after the name and that sometimes replaces it. 2. Label, mark, epigraph

In the fifth, which alreadyit warns that it is in disuse, it means:

5.  Sign in red or red sign.

And it is precisely this fifth that explains the meaning of the previous ones. In the ancient texts, especially legal, the beginning or title of the paragraph was colored "red", and hence derived their meanings.

Note: the English language is less flexible and less often marks the difference between masculine and feminine grammatical genders, which makes it less obvious the masculine-feminine linguistic differentiation in relation to physical sexual differentiation. In any case the differentiation appears: grand-sons/granddaughters, male/ female, freedmen/ freedwomen, free man / free woman,

Rubric 21 

R. MAGISTRATES TO OBTAIN THE ROMAN CITIZENSHIP.
XXI. All persons created duoviri, aediles, or quaestors in accordance with this law shall be Roman citizens, on laying  down the magistracy at the end of the year, together with their parents and wives, and children born in lawful wedlock, and subject to the patria potestas, and in like manner grand-sons and granddaughters being the children of a son, and  subject to the patria potestas, always provided that no more  Roman citizens be created than the number of magistrates proper to be elected in accordance with this law.

R. Ut magistratus civitatem Romanam consequantur. [XXI. . . Qui llvir aedilis quaestor ex hac lege factus erit cives Romani sunto cum post annum magistratu] | abierint cum parentibus coniugibusque {h}ac liberi(s) qui legitumis nuptis quae l siti in potestatem parentium fuerunt item nepotibus ac neptibus filio I nat{al}is [natabus] qui quaeque in potestate parentium fuerint dum ne plures c(ives) R(omani) I  sint qua(m) quod ex h(ac) l(ege) magistratus creare oportet.

Rubric 22

R. PERSONS OBTAINING THE ROMAN CITIZENSHIP TO REMAIN IN THE LEGAL DOMINION', MARITAL CONTROL, AND PARENTAL POWER OF THE SAME PERSONS AS BEFORE.
All persons, male or female, obtaining the Roman citizenship, in accordance with this law, or having obtained it in accordance with an edict of the imperator Caesar Augustus Vespasianus, or the imperator Titus Caesar Augustus, or the imperator Caesar Augustus Domitianus, father of his country, shall be in the parental power or marital control o legal dominion of that person, having been made a Roman citizen by this law, to whom such dependence would be proper, if the said persons had not been transferred into the Roman citizenship; and the said persons shall have the same right of choosing a legal guardian, which they would have, if they had been born of Roman citizen, and had not exchanged their citizenship.

R. Ut qui civitat(em) Roman(am) consequantur, maneant in eorundem m(ancipio) m(anu) potestate.
XXII. Qui quaeque ex h(ac) l(ege) exve edicto imp(eratoris) Caesaris Aug(usti) Vespasiani, imp(eratoris)ve Titi Caesaris Aug(usti), aut imp(eratoris) Caesaris Aug(usti) Domitiani, p(atris) p(atriae), civitatem Roman(am) consecutus consecuta erit. Is ea in eius, qui c(ivis) R(omanus) h(ac) l(ege) factus erit, potestate manu mancipio, cuius esse deberet, si civitate Romana mutatus mutata non esset, esto idque ius tutoris optandi habeto, quod haberet si a cive Romano ortus orta neq(ue) civitate mutatus mutata esset.

Rubric 23

R. PERSONS OBTAINING THE ROMAN CITIZENSHIP TO RETAIN RIGHTS OVER FREEDMEN.
XXIII. In the case of all persons, male female, obtaining  the Roman citizenship in accordance with this law, or having obtained it in accordance with an edict of the imperator  Caesar Vespasianus Augustus or the imperator Titus Caesar Vespasianus Augustus or the imperator Caesar Domitianus Augustus, there shall be the same rights and the same conditions in respect to freedmen or freedwomen, whether their own or their fathers', such freedmen and freedwomen not having come into the Roman citizenship, and likewise in respect to the goods of the said freedmen and freedwomen, and to the services imposed in consideration of their freedoms as would have existed, if the said persons had not exchanged their citizenship.

.R. Ut qui c(ivitatem) R(omanam) consequentur, iura Iiberatorum retineant.
XXIII. Qui quaeve [ex] h(ac) l(ege) exve edicto imp(eratoris) Caes(aris) Vesp(asiani) Aug(usti), imp(eratoris)ve Titi Caes(aris) Vespasian(i) Au(gusti) I aut imp(eratoris) Caes(aris) Domítiani Aug(usti) c(ivitatem) R(omanam) consecutus consecuta erit: is in | libertos libertasve suos suas paternos paternas, qui quae in c(vitatem) R(omanam) non | venerit, deque bonis eorum earum et is, quae libertatis causa inposita | sunt, idem ius eademque condicio esto, quae esset, si cìvitate mutatus I mutata non esset.

Rubric 28.

R. CONCERNING THE MANUMISSION OF SLAVES BEFORE  A DUOVIR.
XXVIII. In the case of any citizen of the municipium Flavium Salpensanum, being possessed of Latin rights, manumitting one of his slaves, male or female, from servitude to liberty  and ordering the said slave to be free man or  free woman at the court of the duovirs  charged with the  highest jurisdiction in the said municipium, always provided that no ward in law and no unmarried woman and no widow  shall manumit such person or order such person to he free man or free woman unless represented by a gnardian, then  the person so manumitted and so ordered to be free shall be a free man or a free woman, possessed of the best rights whereby Latin freedmen are  shall be free persons, provided that a person less than twenty years of age shall only manumit when that number of the decuriones by which decrees may lawfully be made shall have approved just cause of manumission.

R. De servis aput IIvir(um) manumittendis. XXVIII. Si quis municeps munici Flavi Salpensani, qui Latinus erit, aput Ilvir(os), | qui iure dicundo praeerunt eius municipi, servom suom servamve suam | ex servitute in libertate[m] manumiserit, liberum liberamve esse iusserit, | dum ne quis pupillus neve quae virgo mulierve sine tutore auctore | quem quamve manumittat, liberum liberamve esse iubeat: qui ita | manumissus liberve esse iussus erit, liber esto, quaeque ita manumissa | liberave [esse] iussa erit, libera esto, uti qui optum[o] iure Latini libertiní li Iberi sunt erunt; dum is qui minor XX annorum erit ita manumittat, | si causam manumittendi iusta[m] esse is numerus decuríonum, per quem | decreta h(ac) l(ege) facta rata sunt, censuerit. 

Rubric 29

R. CONCERNING THE ASSIGNMENT OF A LEGAL GUARDIAN.
XXIX. As respecting persons, male or female, being citizens of the mllnicipium Flavium Salpensanum, and not being wards in law, who have no legal guardian or one whose legal  existence is uncertains if the said persons shall bave made demand  of the duovirs, charged with the highest juriSdiction in the said municipium, that they shall assign a guardian, at the same time specifying the person whom they desire to be  so assigned, then the magistrate, of whom such demand is made, shall take cognizance of the case, acting on the views  of all his colleagues, whether one or more than one, who are at the time present in the said municipium or within  the boundaries thereof, and, if they shall approve, shall assign the guardian so specified. But if the person, male  37 female, in whose name such demand is made, is a ward in law, or if the magistrate, from whom such demand is made,  shall have no colleague, or no colleague within the boundaries of the said municipium,u then the said magistrate, from whom  such demand shall have been made, shall within the ten days  next following take cognizance of the case, and acting on a  decree of the decuriones, passed in the presence of not less than two-thirds of the said decuriones, shall assign the person  specified by the applicant as his legal guardian,45 provided tha.t thereby the right of tutelage be not withdrawn from  a legally constituted guardian6 The guardian so granted by this law to the said person, provided that thereby the right of tutelage be not withdrawn from a legally constituted guardian, shall be as lawfully appointed as though he were a Roman citizen, and as though the nearest agnate, being a Roman citizen, had been made guardian.

Cui tutor non erit incertusve erit, si is eave municeps municipi Flavi Salpensani erit, et pupilli pupillaeve non erunt, et ab IIviris, qui iure dicundo praeerunt eius municipi, postulaverit, uti sibi tutorem det, et eum, quem dare volet, nominaverit: tum is, a quo postulatum erit, sive unum sive plures collegas habebit, de omnium collegarum sententia, qui tum in eo municipio intrave fines municipi eius erunt, causa cognita, si ei videbitur, eum qui nominatus erit tutorem dato. Sive is eave, cuius nomine ita postulatum erit, pupillus pupillave erit, sive is, a quo postulatum erit, non habebit collegam, collegave eius in eo municipio intrave fines eius municipi nemo erit: tum is, a quo ita postulatum erit, causa cognita in diebus X proximis, ex decreto decurionum, quod cum duae partes decurionum non minus adfuerint, factum erit, eum, qui nominatus erit, quo ne ab iusto tutore tutela abeat, ei tutorem dato. Qui tutor hac lege datus erit, is ei, cui datus erit, quo ne ab iusto tutore tutela abeat, tam iustus tutor esto, quam si is civis Romanus et ei adgnatus proximus civis Romanus tutor esset.

Similar expressions appear in the other laws with content also similar and that is because  I avoid repeating them.

The post Male/Female (Qui…Quae…) appeared first on History of Greece and Rome.

According to Hobbes man advances, from the “state of nature“,of  “war of all against all” (bellum omnium contra omnes), to an organized society; first to a state of “natural law” that prevents man threatening life and then to a state of positive law, the result of social pact.

So, with Locke and his “Two Treatises of Government” and Rousseau and his “Social Contract”  he addresses  in modern times the origin of society. Also ancient thinkers as Plato in his Republic and Aristotle raised this issue, but that deserves a lengthy article that on occasion I will.

Isn’t Hobbes the author of the famous phrase homo homini lupus

Well, it is true that Hobbes used the expression “Homo homini lupus” in a given context, but never he claimed the paternity, which does not apply to him, but he has probably been the one who has contributed more to its size and knowledge in modern era.

But if Hobbes did not create that sentence, then who did?

Some time ago  good friends of renowned intellectual prestige raised the issue in one of the most widespread social networks. It suggested me the possibility to dig a little deeper into the origin and meaning of that phrase.

First it is convenient to know a little more detail on Hobbes‘s phrase in context, or at least in the paragraph in which it is immersed.

Hobbes used the phrase at the beginning of the work “De cive”, “On the citizen” in the dedication to the Earl of Devonshire. Actually the initial and full title was “Elementa Philosophica de Cive”, “Philosophical elements about the citizen.”

Since the book begins with a general assessment of ancient Rome and its empire, and this blog is specifically about  the Antiquity, I would reproduce a more extensive part than the mere reproduction of the phrase in question. In passing the reader will see how until  into the twentieth century all intellectual and thinker was a connoisseur of classical Antiquity; it is now when  we move towards a quasi absolute ignorance that deprive young people of knowledge of much of their own identity.

The work was written in Latin, the international language of science and thought even then, and published in 1642 in Paris and the translation into English appeared in 1651  with the title  Philosophicall rudiments Concerning government and society  So I will offer the texts in the  two versions.

To the Right Honourable, William, Earle of Devonshire,

My most honoured Lord
May it please your Lordship,
It was the speech of the Roman people (to whom the name of King had been render’d odious, as well by the tyrannie of the Tarquins, as by the Genius and Decretals of that City) ‘Twas the speech I say of the publick, however pronounced from a private mouth, (if yet Cato the Censor were no more than such) That all Kings are to be reckon’d amongst ravenous Beasts.  But what a Beast of prey was the Roman people, whilst with its conquering Eagles it erected its proud Trophees so far and wide over the world, bringing the Africans, the Asiaticks, the Macedonians, and the Achaeans, with many other despoyled Nations, into a specious bondage, with the pretence of preferring them to be Denizens of Rome? So that if Cato’s saying were a wise one, ’twas every whit as wise that of Pontius Telesinus; who flying about with open mouth through all the Companies of his Army, (in that famous encounter which he had with Sylla) cryed out, That Rome her selfe, as well as Sylla, was to be raz’d; for that there would alwayes be Wolves and Depraedatours of their Liberty, unlesse the Forrest that lodg’d them were grubb’d up by the roots. To speak impartially, both sayings are very true; That Man to Man is a kind of God; and that Man to Man is an arrant Wolfe. The first is true, if we compare Citizens amongst themselves; and the second, if we compare Cities. In the one, there’s some analogie of similitude with the Deity, to wit, Justice and Charity, the twin-sisters of peace: But in the other, Good men must defend themselves by taking to them for a Sanctuary the two daughters of War, Deceipt and Violence: that is in plaine termes a meer brutall Rapacity: which although men object to one another as a reproach, by an inbred custome which they have of beholding their own actions in the persons of other men, wherein, as in a Mirroir, all things on the left side appeare to be on the right, & all things on the right side to be as plainly on the left; yet the naturall right of preservation which we all receive from the uncontroulable Dictates of Necessity, will not admit it to be a Vice, though it confesse it to be an Unhappinesse. Now that with Cato himselfe, (a person of so great a renowne for wisdome) Animosity should so prevaile instead of Judgement, and partiality instead of Reason, that the very same thing which he thought equall in his popular State, he should censure as unjust in a Monarchical, other men perhaps may have leisure to admire. But I have been long since of this opinion, That there was never yet any more than vulgar prudence that had the luck of being acceptable to the Giddy people; but either it hath not been understood, or else having been so, hath been levell’d and cryed downe.

Populi Romani,memoria Tarquiniorum, et civitatis instituto, Regibus iniqui, vox erat (Excellentiss.Domine) prolata ore Marci Catonis Censoris, Reges omnes de genere esse bestiarum rapacium. Ipse autem Populus Romanus, qui per Africanos, Asiaticos,Macedonicos, Achaicos, caeterosque a spoliatis gentibus cognominatos cives, totum fere orbem terrarum diripuerat, qualis bellua erat? Non minus ergo quam Cato, sapienter dixit Pontius Telesinus.Is praelio ad Portam Collinam contra Syllam circumvolans ordines exercitus fui; vociferatusque, eruendam delendamque ipsam Romam, adiiciebat, numquam defuturos Raptores Italicae libertatis Lupos, nisi sylva, in quam refugere solerent, esset excisa.
Profecto utrumque vere dictum est, Homo homini Deus, et Homo homini Lupus. Illud, si concives inter se; Hoc, si civitates comparemus. Illic iustitia et charitate, virtutibus pacis, ad similittudinem Dei acceditur; Hic propter malorum pravitatem, recurrendum etiam bonis est, si se tueri volunt, ad virtutes Bellicas,vim et dolum, id est, ad ferinam rapacitatem. Quam etsi hominess pro convitio invicem obiiciant, more innato, facta sua in personis alioru, tanquam in speculo,sinistra dextra; dextra sinistra existimantes; vitium tamen esse non sinit profectum a necessitate conservationis propriae ius naturale. Quod autem Catoni,viro spientiae celebratissimae, odium pro iudicio, affectus pro ratione imponere in tantum potuit, ut quod aequum in populo suo, idem reges facere iniquum censeret, mirari fortasse alii poterunt, ego sane in ea opinione iam diu sum,neque egregiam sententiam unquam fuisse quae placuit populo, neque sapientiam vulgari maiorem vulgo agnosci posse; quipped quam vel non intelligent, vel intelligentes aequant.

Note how the Latin phrase “profecto utrumque vere dictum est …” “truly it has been said ...”  implies that Hobbes is not the creator, but the phrase existed when it was said.

What is the origin of the phrase homo homini lupus?

Since antiquity it is cited as probable origin and Latin sentence, closer to quote of Hobbes, a passage from the comedy of Plautus (254-184 BC) Asinaria (The Comedy of Asses). It is a typical comedy in which it is developed a complicated tangle between a father, his authoritarian and rich wife, a  son in love and their slaves scheming for their masters.

The argument is summarized at the beginning of the work itself:

ARGUMENT

An old gentleman, whose wife is the head of the household,
desires to give his son financial support in a love affair.
He therefore had some money, brought to Saurea in payment
for some asses, counted out to a certain rascally servant of
his own, Leonida. This money goes to the young fellow’s
mistress, and he concedes his father an evening with her.
A rival of his, beside himself at being deprived of the
girl, sends word, by a parasite, to the old gentleman’s
wife, of the whole matter. In rushes the wife and drags her
husband from the house of vice.(Translation by Paul Nixon. ambridge, Massachusetts Harvard University Press. London William Heinemannn Ltd.           First printed 1916)

ARGVMENTVM
Amanti argento filio auxiliarier
Sub imperio vivens volt senex uxorio.
Itaque ob asinos relatum pretium Saureae
Numerari iussit servolo Leonidae.
Ad amicam id fertur. cedit noctem filius.
Rivalis amens ob praereptam mulierem,
Is rem omnem uxori per parasitum nuntiat.
Accurrit uxor ac virum e lustris rapit.

Was Plautus the creator of the phrase?

The phrase in question appears in a passage in which the Leonid’s slave pretends to be the house manager for a merchant give him the money from the sale of some asses and he give it to the boy to turn he can give it to the girl and her matchmaker or Celestina, only hungry for money. But the merchant is not fooled.

Plautus, Asinaria Act II, scene IV, v. 484 y ss.

LEONIDA: How now, whip-knave? How say you, hang-dog? Do you suppose that we shall run away from our master? Go this instant then to our master, where you were citing us just now, and where you were wishing to go.

THE ASS-DEALER: What, now at last? Still, you shall never get a coin of money away from me, unless Demænetus shall order me to give it.

LEONIDA:Do so. Come, move on then. Are you to offer insults to another person, and are they not to be repeated to yourself? I’m a man as much as you are.

THE ASS-DEALER: No doubt such is the fact.

LEONIDA: Follow me this way, then. With your good leave10 I would now say this: not a person has ever accused me by reason of my deserving it, nor is there in Athens one other individual, this day, whom they would think they could as safely trust.

THE ASS-DEALER: Perhaps so: but still, you shall never this day persuade me to entrust to you, whom I don’t know, this money A man to a man is a wolf11, not a man, when the other doesn’t know of what character he is.

LEONIDA: Now at last you are appeasing me12: I was sure that this day you would give satisfaction to this poor head of mine; although I’m in mean garb, still, I’m well to do, nor can an estimate of my means be formed from it.

THE ASS-DEALER: Perhaps so.

LEONIDA: Still more then I tell you: Periphanes, a merchant of Rhodes, a rich man, in the absence of my master, himself alone paid over to me, in private, a talent of silver, and trusted me, nor was he deceived in it.

THE ASS-DEALER: Perhaps so.

LEONIDA: And you, too, yourself, as well, if you had enquired about me of other people, would, i’ faith, I’m quite sure, have entrusted to me what you now have with you.

THE ASS-DEALER: I don’t deny it. (Exeunt.) 
(The Comedies of Plautus. Henry Thomas Riley. London. G. Bell and Sons. 1912.  Translation by Henry Thomas Riley)

LEONIDA. Quid, verbero? ain tu, furcifer? erum nos fugitare censes?
ei nunciam ad erum, quo vocas, iam dudum quo volebas.  

MERCATOR. Nunc demum? tamen numquam hinc feres argenti nummum, nisi me
dare iusserit Demaenetus.

LEONIDA. Ita facito, age ambula ergo.
tu contumeliam alteri facias, tibi non dicatur?
tam ego homo sum quam tu.

MERCATOR. Scilicet. ita res est.

LEONIDA. Sequere hac ergo.
praefiscini hoc nunc dixerim: nemo etiam me accusavit
merito meo, neque me alter est Athenis hodie quisquam,
cui credi recte aeque putent.

MERCATOR. Fortassis. sed tamen me
numquam hodie induces, ut tibi credam hoc argentum ignoto.
lupus est homo homini, non homo, quom qualis sit non novit.

LEONIDA. Iam nunc secunda mihi facis. scibam huic te capitulo hodie
facturum satis pro iniuria; quamquam ego sum sordidatus,
frugi tamen sum, nec potest peculium enumerari.

MERCATOR. Fortasse.

LEONIDA. Etiam ~ nunc dico Periphanes Rhodo mercator dives
absente ero solus mihi talentum argenti soli
adnumeravit et mihi credidit, nequest deceptus in eo.

MERCATOR. Fortasse.

LEONIDA. Atque etiam tu quoque ipse, si esses percontatus
me ex aliis, scio pol crederes nunc quod fers.

MERCATOR. Haud negassim.—

Exactly in verse 495 it is said: “Lupus est homo homini, non homo, quom qualis sit non novit” , that  can be translated literally as

“Wolf is the man for man, and not man, when he does not know  who is the other”

and with a less literal translation as

When a person is unknown for you, he is for you as a wolf, not a man.

So the phrase does not appear in Plautus with the transcendence that it is used later when acquires the category of sentence, maxim, proverb, etc .; rather, it is used in a context of personal relationships and in a comic scene of inconsequential matter. This is a very important difference with Hobbes, where it refers the previous state of nature of men, before the establishment of human society.

Having said all this, we can ask too, was Plautus the creator of the phrase?

Plautus is the most important comedy writer  in Latin. Like almost all Latin  literature and culture, the theater is also indebted to the Greeks. Plautus is not only inspired by Greek on comedies but sometimes practically he translates and adapts them to the new Roman scene. He sometimes uses several Greek comedies to compose one Latin work;  this mixture  was called “contaminatio”, and this practice generated considerable discussion on what might be called “literary criticism“.

Well, the comedy “Asinaria” is a translation from  a Greek comedy called “The carrier” Onagos, οναγός, as it is  told in the preface to the same work that usually accompanies the edition:

Preface, v.6 ss.

Enough enough! Sit down–and be sure you put that in your bill! (to audience) Now I shall say why I have come out before you here and what I wished: I have come to acquaint you with the name of this play. For as far as the plot is concerned, that is quite simple.

Now I shall say what I said I wished to say: the Greek name of this play is ONAGOS: Demophilus wrote it: Maccus translated it into a foreign tongue. He wishes to call it THE COMEDY OF ASSES, by your leave. It is a clever comedy,full of drollery and laughable situations. Do oblige me by being attentive, that now too, as in other days, Mars may be with you. (Translation by Henry Thomas Riley)

nunc quid processerim huc et quid mihi voluerim
dicam: ut sciretis nomen huius fabulae;
nam quod ad argumentum attinet, sane brevest.
nunc quod me dixi velle vobis dicere,
dicam: huic nomen graece Onagos fabulae;               10
Demophilus scripsit, Maccus vortit barbare;
Asinariam volt esse, si per vos licet.
inest lepos ludusque in hac comoedia,
ridicula res est. date benigne operam mihi,
ut vos, ut alias, pariter nunc Mars adiuvet. 

Does he took the book? Therefore does Plautus took from  the Greek work the phrase which then, with a little modification,  has become so famous? Most likely this occurred; it is very likely that the phrase was already on comedy of Demophilus, but we don’t have an undeniable knowledge of it.

Used by Demophilus or by other Greeks, the phrase sound more or less as is stated many years later in Erasmus: Ἄνθρωπος ἀνθρώπου λύκος (ánthroposs anthropou Lykos).

Homo homini deus, man is a god to man

In any case, in the Greek world is well and often known a phrase that is precisely the opposite of the above: ἄνθρωπος ἀνθρώπου δαιμόνιον (anthropos anthropou daemon), on Latin it has produced “homo homini deus” and on English “Man to man is a kind of God”.

This is precisely the phrase that appears in Hobbes opposed to “man is a wolf to man“, although it is precisely this that has won more fortune.

ἄνθρωπος ἀνθρώπου δαιμόνιον (anthropos anthropos daimonion) is a sentence or phrase common in Greek and testified on numerous occasions and of course also its correspondent on Latin “Homo homini deus“.

In Greek, for example, it appears on the “Corpus paroemiographorum graecorum” at least four times: in the case of Zenobios, I, 91; in Diogenianus or pseudo Diogenianus, I, 80 and I, 46; Michael Apostolios, III, 10, and Gregory of Cyprus I, 50.

In Latin, the comic poet Ceecilius (ca 280-ca.168 BC) used a verse that is preserved through the appointment of Symmachus, the fourth century author, who uses it in a letter of thanks:

Symmachus, Letters IX,114:

Playwright Ceecilius correctly  said: man is a god to man, if he knows his duty. ”
Recte Caecilius comicus inquit

   Homo homini deus est, si suum officium sciat.

Caecilius seems imbued with Stoic philosophy and pro-Hellenic  Circle of Scipions. Recall that Terence had written in his Heautontimorumenos, v. 77, the famous phrase

«homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto»,

I am a man, and nothing that concerns a man do I deem a matter of indifference to me (The Comedies of Terence. Henry Thomas Riley. Ney York. Harper and Brothers. 1874).

But it is convenient produce the whole letter, very short letter, moreover, because it helps us to understand the extent in the use of this phrase and the reason for its use

Playwright Ceecilius correctly  said: man is to man a god when he recognizes his duty I can say that this sentence agrees with you, who has selflessly applied vigilant attention to our affairs. Since then the memory lives in our hearts, the praise in our mouths and the glory of your action and your interest not only flourishes momentarily but it will live forever as my reason promises me. Now even it would be appropriate a neater speech to thank it, if I don’t feared to give the impression of having paid once all I have to owe. He does not support receiving a benefit who is quick to liberate the link and he does not seem to accept mutual aid as a friend if he blushes by a delay in showing gratitude. But the nature of my character is different: I hasten to pay pecuniary interest and I desire to owe  for a long time testing the repayment  of evidences of consideration. Good luck.

SYMMACHUS . . . . . Recte Caecilius comicus: Homo, inquit, homini deus est, si suum officium sciat. Hanc ego in te dixerim sententiam convenire, qui nostris negotiis curam vigilem praestitisti. Hinc in pectore memoria, laus in ore versatur. Nec in praesentia modo floret facti et studii tui gloria, sed, ut mens augurat, aevum vigebit. Prolixior agendis gratiis sermo etiam nunc competeret, ni vererer, ne simul totum videar expunxisse, quod debeo. Impatiens est accepti beneficii, qui nexu properat liberari: nec videtur mutuam operam quasi amicus accipere, si erubescit ad moram gratiae. Alia mei ingenii ratio est. Pecuniae fenus accelero persolvere: officiorum vices diu opto debere. Vale.

This is a letter of thanksgiving for a well-received  and in the ancient world it is widespread the idea that who does good, who does a benefit to someone, the benefactor, he is a god. This helps to understand the extent of the deification of rulers, because they are benefactors (some of them are called precisely so ,Evergetes, benefactor, such as Ptolemy III Euergetes, (Greek: Πτολεμαίος Ευεργέτης), who lived c. 282-222 BC, third pharaoh of the Ptolemaic dynasty) and also the extension and trivialization, if it is preferred, to  anyone who favors a similar person. It is therefore a sentence that is very used to recognize a favor for someone.

Interestingly in the same comedy “Asinaria” this idea is used, although in a burlesque context, as it befits the comedy, when the slave requires a divine treatment for the favor of giving the money, in verse 712:

Argyippus. How about it now? There’s a good fellow! Seeing you two have had your fill of sport with me, going to give us the money, are you?

Libanus. Oh well, if you put me up an altar and statue, yes, and offer me up an ox here the same as a god: for I’m your goddess Salvation, I am.

Leonida. Come, sir, get rid of that chap, won’t you, and apply to me in person, yes, and let me have those statues and supplications he ordered for himself.

Argyrippus. Ah, and by what name does your godship pass?

Leonida. Fortune, yes sir, Indulgent Fortune.
(Translator Paul Nixon. The Project Gutenberg)

ARGYRIPPUS. Quid nunc, amabo? quoniam, ut est libitum, nos delusistis,
datisne argentum?
LIBANUS. Si quidem mihi statuam et aram statuis
atque ut deo mi hic immolas bovem: nam ego tibi Salus sum.
LEONIDA: Etiam, tu, ere, istunc amoves abs te atque –ipse me adgredere atque illa, sibi quae hic iusserat,mihi statuis supplicasque?
ARGYRIPPUS: Quem te autem divom nominem?
LEONIDA: Fortunam, atque Obsequentem

The Latin texts in which this idea of the divinity of benefactor man appears, are infinite. I just put two very significant examples.

Virgil in the first of his famous Ecloges  thanks Augustus that their land don’t will be confiscated to give them to a soldier. Virgil considered him a “god“:

Virigil, Ecloge I, v.6-8)

TITYRUS
O Meliboeus, ’twas a god vouchsafed
this ease to us, for him a god will I
deem ever, and from my folds a tender lamb
oft with its life-blood shall his altar stain.
His gift it is that, as your eyes may see,
my kine may roam at large, and I myself
play on my shepherd’s pipe what songs I will.
(Vergil. Eclogues. J. B. Greenough. Boston. Ginn & Co. 1895.)

O Meliboee, deus nobis haec otia fecit.
Namque erit ille mihi semper deus: illius aram
Saepe tener nostris ab ovilibus imbuet agnus.
Ille meas errare boves, ut cernis, et ipsum
Ludere quae vellem calamo permisit agresti.

Pliny says in his Naturalis Historia, 2,7.18-19

Whereas in very deed, a god unto a man is he, that helpeth a man; ; and this is the true and direct pathway to everlasting glorie. In this way went the noble Romans in old time: and in this tract at this day goeth, with heavenlly pace, Vespasian Augustus, both he and his children: Vespasian, I say, the most mightie ruler of the whole world: whiles hee relieveth the afflicted State of the Romane Empire and Commonweale. And this is the most auncient manner of requitall to such benefactours, That they should be canonized gods. And hereof came the names as well of all other gods, as of the stars and planets (which I have mentioned before) in recognisance of mens good deserts.  (Translated into English by Philemon Holland)

deus est mortali iuvare mortalem, et haec ad aeternam gloriam via. hac proceres iere Romani, hac nunc caelesti passu cum liberis suis vadit maximus omnis aevi rector Vespasianus Augustus fessis rebus subveniens.

hic est vetustissimus referendi bene merentibus gratiam mos, ut tales numinibus adscribant. quippe et aliorum nomina deorum et quae supra retuli siderum ex hominum nata sunt meritis. Iovem quidem aut Mercurium aliterve alios inter se vocari et esse caelestem nomenclaturam,

The  thought of Pliny concerning the gods is also here clearly implied: it is next to atheism: God is for a mortal to help mortals.

The second, homo homini lupus, probably existed as opposed to the first, leading to the double sentence, which may exist in Demóphilus, or in other authors.

The image of the wolf as particularly cruel animal man is without doubt on the relationship of the wolf with the dog, which incidentally is the  “faithful friend” of man, the man’s best friend,  and probably the first domesticated animal perhaps 40,000 years ago. The scientific names of both subspecies are “canis lupus” for the wolf and  “canis lupus familiaris” for the dog, due to  their genetic proximity.

They are countless  passages in which the dog is the man’s best fried, (hominis canis optimus amicus); Recall for example the dog that recognized Ulysses, Argos, when he returns to Ithaca; or what about the dog as guardian of the master’s house when  throughout the Empire appears the famous phrase “Cave Canem”, “beware of the dog” on the door of the property?. If domestic canis is the best, the wild canis is the worst in the popular imagination and experience.

I’ll leave for another time any reference to the myth of “lycanthropy” or conversion of man into a wolf and the fact that he was precisely Licaón (man whom Zeus turned into a wolf) who gave laws to humans and make possible the abandonment of wildlife and the development of human society under rules of law.

Among other Latin texts next to the phrase “homo homini lupus“, we have the verse of Ovid (43 B.C.-8 AD) in Tristia V, VII elegy, vv. 45-46:

“Vix sunt homines hoc nomine digni. Quamquam lupi, saevae plus feritatis habent”

Recall how Ovid, forced into exile in Pontus, on the edge of the Empire, beside the Black Sea, spends his days in sorrow and homesickness or nostalgia. Punished for a fault that has never known exactly, he was unable to come back to Rome that gave him so much glory. He wrote these “sad poems,” “Tristia“.

Although the article is perhaps on too long with too many texts, I can not resist playing a few verses in which to frame the said and by the way they report us on how hard it is to be  exiled to a mundane poet of success in the world’s capital , Rome.

He, asked by his friends how he spends his days, writes among other things:

Tristia, V,VII ,  37 et ss:

But yet I have no anxiety to be praised, and I have no care for future glory, which had, more to my comfort, better been obscured. I occupy my mind with my pursuits, and I beguile my sorrows ; I try, too, thereby to deceive my cares. What should I do, in preference, alone on these solitary shores ? or what occupation wouldst thou rather that I should endeavour to seek ? If I look at the place, it is odious ; and there cannot, in all the world, be one more wretched than it. If I look at the men : the men are hardly worthy of that name, and they have more savage ferocity than wolves.

They regard not laws, but right yields to might, and justice, overcome, lies prostrate under the warlike sword. They poorly repel the cold, with skins and flowing trowsers ; and their faces are rough, covered with long hair. Yestiges of the Greek language are remaining, in a few words : this, too, has become barbarous, through the Getic pronunciation.

There is no one among this people who can by chance translate into Latin, words in general use. I, ivho am a poet of Rome (pardon me, ye Muses), am compelled to say many things in the Sarmatian language. I am ashamed, I confess it ; for now, from long disuse, scarcely do the Latin expressions occur to me ; and I have no doubt but that there are no few barbarisms in this little work. That is not the fault of the man, but of the place. But, that I may not lose all acquaintance with the Ausonian tongue, and my voice become dumb in its native language, I talk to myself, and I run over the unaccustomed words, and repeat the unfortunate exponents 12 of my pursuits. (Translation by Henry T.Riley, B.A. London. MDCCCLI)

nec  tamen, ut lauder, vigilo curamque futuri
nominis, utilius quod latuisset, ago.
detineo studiis animum falloque dolores,
experior curis et dare verba meis.
quid potius faciam desertis solus in oris,
quamve malis aliam quaerere coner  opem?
sive locum specto, locus est inamabilis, et quo
esse nihil toto tristius orbe potest,
sive homines, vix sunt homines hoc nomine digni,
quamque lupi, saevae plus feritatis habent.
non metuunt leges, sed cedit viribus aequum,
victaque pugnaci iura sub ense iacent.
pellibus et laxis arcent mala frigora bracis,
oraque sunt longis horrida tecta comis,
in paucis remanent Graecae vestigia linguae,
haec quoque iam Getico barbara facta sono.
unus in hoc nemo est populo,
qui forte Latine quaelibet e medio reddere verba queat.
ille ego Romanus vates—ignoscite, Musae!—
Sarmatico cogor plurima more loqui.
en pudet et fateor, iam desuetudine longa
vix subeunt ipsi verba Latina mihi.
nec dubito quin sint et in hoc non pauca libello
barbara . non hominis culpa, sed ista loci.
ne tamen Ausoniae perdam commercia linguae,
et fiat patrio vox mea muta sono,
ipse loquor mecum desuetaque verba retracto,
et studii repeto signa sinistra mei.

Seneca had expressed the wickedness of man without resorting to comparison with the wolf in his Epistle to Lucilius number 103, in which he notes the need of  to distrust men.

As it is not too long , I will  transcribe it fully for  provide the reader  the knowledge of one of the 124 letters with moral advice that Seneca wrote to his friend Lucilius, although the specific phrase that refers to the matter at hand is:

but it is from his fellow-man that a man’s everyday danger comes

“Ab homine homini quotidianum periculum”.

So the idea of potential evil of man to his fellow is a well-spread idea.

Epistle to Lucilius number CIII. On the Dangers of Association with our Fellow-Men

Why are you looking about for troubles which may perhaps come your way, but which may indeed not come your way at all? I mean fires, falling buildings, and other accidents of the sort that are mere events rather than plots against us. Rather beware and shun those troubles which dog our steps and reach out their hands against us. Accidents, though they may be serious, are few – such as being shipwrecked or thrown from one’s carriage; but it is from his fellow-man that a man’s everyday danger comes. Equip yourself against that; watch that with an attentive eye. There is no evil more frequent, no evil more persistent, no evil more insinuating. Even the storm, before it gathers, gives a warning; houses crack before they crash; and smoke is the forerunner of fire. But damage from man is instantaneous, and the nearer it comes the more carefully it is concealed.

You are wrong to trust the countenances of those you meet. They have the aspect of men, but the souls of brutes; the difference is that only beasts damage you at the first encounter; those whom they have passed by they do not pursue. For nothing ever goads them to do harm except when need compels them: it is hunger or fear that forces them into a fight. But man delights to ruin man.

You must, however, reflect thus what danger you run at the hand of man, in order that you may deduce what is the duty of man. Try, in your dealings with others, to harm not, in order that you be not harmed. You should rejoice with all in their joys and sympathize with them in their troubles, remembering what you should offer and what you should withhold.  And what may you attain by living such a life? Not necessarily freedom from harm at their hands, but at least freedom from deceit. In so far, however, as you are able, take refuge with philosophy: she will cherish you in her bosom, and in her sanctuary you shall be safe, or, at any rate, safer than before. People collide only when they are travelling the same path.  But this very philosophy must never be vaunted by you; for philosophy when employed with insolence and arrogance has been perilous to many. Let her strip off your faults, rather than assist you to decry the faults of others. Let her not hold aloof from the customs of mankind, nor make it her business to condemn whatever she herself does not do. A man may be wise without parade and without arousing enmity. Farewell.
(Translated by Richard Mott Gummere, A Loeb Classical Library edition 1925)

Quid ista circumspicis, quae tibi possunt fortasse evenire, sed possunt et non evenire ? Incendium dico, ruinam, alia, quae  nobis incidunt, non insidiantur; illa potius vide, illa devita, quae  nos observant, quae captant. Rariores sunt casus, etiam si graves, naufragium facere, vehiculo everti; ab homine homini cotidianum periculum. Adversus hoc te expedi, hoc intentis oculis intuere. Nullum est malum frequentius, nullum pertinacius, nullum blandius.

Ac  tempestas minatur antequam surgat, crepant aedificia antequam corruant, praenuntiat fumus incendium; subita est ex homine pernicies et eo diligentius tegitur, quo propius accedit.
Erras, si istorum tibi qui occurrunt vultibus credis; hominum effigies habent, animos ferarum, nisi quod illarum perniciosus  est primus incursus; quos transiere, non quaerunt. Numquam enim illas ad nocendum nisi necessitas incitat; aut  fame aut timore coguntur ad pugnam; homini perdere hominem libet.

Tu tamen ita cogita, quod ex homine periculum sit, ut cogites, quod sit hominis officium. Alterum intuere, ne laedaris, alterum ne laedas. Commodis omnium laeteris, movearis incommodis et memineris, quae praestare debeas, quae cavere.

Sic vivendo quid consequaris ? Non te ne noceant, sed ne fallant. Quantum potes autem, in philosophiam recede: illa te sinu  suo proteget, in huius sacrario eris aut tutus aut tutior. Non arietant inter se nisi in eadem ambulantes via. Ipsam autem philosophiam non debebis iactare; multis fuit periculi causa insolenter tractata et contumaciter.

Tibi vitia detrahat, non aliis exprobret. Non abhorreat a publicis moribus nec hoc agat, ut quicquid non facit, damnare videatur. Licet sapere sine pompa, sine invidia. Vale.

But he also wrote “Man is a sacred thing for man“, “Homo homini res sacra“, in the letter 95.33.

he letter is long and with it Seneca  lashes  against gluttony and waste, origin of many diseases of body and soul. Here I will simply transcribe the paragraph in which the phrase appears, advising the reader the full reading of this “epistula“.

Epistle to Lucilius number  XCV, 33:

33. One needs the rapid hand, the master-craft.

Men seek pleasure from every source. No vice remains within its limits; luxury is precipitated into greed. We are overwhelmed with forgetfulness of that which is honourable. Nothing that has an attractive value, is base. Man, an object of reverence in the eyes of man, is now slaughtered for jest and sport; and those whom it used to be unholy to train for the purpose of inflicting and enduring wounds, are thrust forth exposed and defenceless; and it is a satisfying spectacle to see a man made a corpse.
(Translated by Richard Mott Gummere, A Loeb Classical Library edition 1925)

[33] …voluptas ex omni quaeritur. Nullum intra se manet vitium; in avaritiam luxuria praeceps est. Honesti oblivio invasit. Nihil turpest, cuius placet pretium. Homo, sacra res homini, iam per lusum ac iocum occiditur et quem erudiri ad inferenda accipiendaque vulnera nefas erat, is iam nudus inermisque producitur satisque spectaculi ex homine mors est.

Many years later the Spanish Dominican Francisco de Vitoria (1483-1546), who made a remarkable contribution to the  international law and whose name it bears today a Spanish private university of conservative orientation, refers to these verses of Ovid when he writes:

It is against natural law that man rejects man without cause, because man is not a wolf to man, as Ovid said, but a man (Relección primera. De los Indios,III,3ª ed. a cura de T.Urdanoz. Madrid 1960,p.709).

“Contra ius naturale est, ut homo hominem sine aliqua causa aversetur. “non enim homini homo lupus est, ut ait Ovidius, sed homo”.

At the same period of Vitoria, a famous humanist, Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) used the same phrase, contrasting the two terms and he does it precisely on one of his most famous works, in Adagia,  which was printed not less than twenty times prior to De Cive of Hobbes; The Adagia  were published  first time in 1508.

Actually Erasmus starts from the Greek proverb of Zósimus, though he does not say, an he  devotes to the subject  two adages, numbers 69 and 70 of the First Chiliade.  The first is dedicated to comment on the phrase “Homo homini deus” and the second to “Homo homini lupus”.

Note: Chiliade is a word derived from Greek “kilo” (thousand)  an it means “thousand”
The first, the adage 69, that he spent to  Ἄνθρωπος ἀνθρώπου δαιμόνιον, “Homo homini deus,” is very long. It begins with a long reference to the “deification” among the ancients.

I,I,70  Homo homini deus. Man is a god to man

Not far from this is the phrase Ἄνθρωπος ἀνθρώπου δαιμόνιον, Man is a god to man, usually said abount one who has conferred sudden and unlooked for salvation, or who has brought help by some great benefaction. To be a god, thought the ancients, was simply and solely of value to mortal men;

Non admodum hinc abludit et illud:Ἄνθρωπος ἀνθρώπου δαιμόνιον, id est
Homo homini deus, quod dici solet de eo, qui subitam atque insperatam attulit
salutem aut qui magno quopiam beneficio juvit. Antiquitas, enim nihil aliud
existimabat esse deum quam prodesse mortalibus…

So “homo homini deus” is a saying, an adage,  that men are wont to say. The ancient believed that to be god is nothing but to be beneficial to mortals.

Erasmus is then based on the authority of Homer and Hesiod and Strabo and Horace and Juvenal and Pliny and Virgil and Ovid and Plutarch and St. Paul and Gregory of Nyssa, to give examples of benefactors who are gods or considered as such. He ends clarifying under what conditions a Christian can use the expression without offending God.

Certainly Pliny, with his phrase “Deus est mortali iuvare mortalem“, discussed above, shows his inclination towards atheism and his little reverence for the gods, as the own Erasmus takes charge of  highlight in this adage. Pliny does not admit a supreme deity to take care of men, but he believes that it is the world itself or some Nature which  directs everything:

Pliny in the Natural History, book 2, is more clearly referring to the Greek proverb, but speaks as irreverently about the gods as he does a little later about the immortality of souls and foolish about the resurrection of bodies. For after gibing at the multiplicity of gods, and utterly refusing to attribute the care of mortals to the one supreme divinity which he takes to be either the world or some kind of Nature, he says: ‘To be a god is to bring aid to a mortal, though mortal oneself. And this is the way to eternal glory. (Translated by Margaret Mann Phillips. University of Toronto Press)

Plinius Secundus libro Naturalis historiae secundo manifestius Graecam παροιμίαν
indicavit, sed tam impie sentiens de diis quam paulo post de animarum
immortalitate deque corporum resurrectione desipienter. Nam cum et multitudinem
deorum irrisisset et uni illi summo, quem aut mundum hunc aut naturam nescio
quam esse putat, prorsus ademisset curam mortalium, Deus est, inquit, mortali
iuvare mortalem. Et haec ad aeternam gloriam via.

The second adage, 70, is much shorter

I,I,70  Homo homini lupus  Man is a wolf to man

Ἄνθρωπος ἀνθρώπου λύκος. Man is a wolf to man. Almost the opposite of the foregoing, and in a way derived from it apparently, is the phrase of Plautus in the Asinaria, ‘Man is a wolf to man.’ Here we are warned not to trust ourselves to an unknown person, but to beware of him as of a wolf. ‘A man is a wolf and not a man,’ he says, ‘to the one who knows nothing of his character.’  (Translated by Margaret Mann Phillips. University of Toronto Press)

Ἄνθρωπος ἀνθρώπου λύκος, id est Homo homini lupus. Superiori quasi
diversum est ac velut hinc effictum videtur, quod usurpavit Plautus in Asinaria, Homo homini lupus. Quo monemur, ne quid fidamus homini ignoto, sed perinde atque a lupo caveamus:

     Lupus est (inquit) homo homini, non homo, qui qualis sit non novit.  (Plauto, Asinaria 495)

And  Francis Bacon (1561-1616), who operates on a subject on Justice and State, as Hobbes, says in his Instauratio Magna, in De dignitate et augmentis Scientiarum, in Liber VI, C.iii . Exempla antithetorum XX,:

It is owing to justice that man to man is a god, not a wolf. (Editor: Joseph Devey)

“Iustitia debetur, quod homo homini sit Deus, non lupus”

Note: François Tricaud, in his article: “Homo homini Deus”, “Homo homini lupus” :Sources de Recherches de deux Formules Hobbes “, doesn’t know this quote; he states that Bacon is  doesn’t  use the double formula: “. … deus… lupus”.

And also the same Bacon, in a similar context in Liber VIII, caput II, in the parable XXV, which he called “Fons turbatus pede, et vena corrupta,  est iustus cadens coram impio” and in that he warns  it is necessary to  avoid unjust trial because the injustice of judge corrupts the sources of the law:

XXV.—: A just man falling before the wicked, is a troubled fountain and a corrupted spring
This is a caution to states, that they should have a capital regard to the passing an unjust or infamous sentence in any great and weighty cause, where not only the guilty is acquitted, but the innocent condemned. To countenance private injuries, indeed, disturbs and pollutes the clear streams of justice, as it were, in the brook; but unjust and great public sentences, which are afterward drawn into precedents, infect and defile the very fountain of justice. For when once the court goes on the side of injustice, the law becomes a public robber, and one man really a wolf to another. (Editor: Joseph Devey)

25. Fons turbatus pede, et vena corrupta, est justus cadens coram impio.
EXPLICATIO. Praecipit Parabola, rebuspublicis ante omnia cavendum esse de iniquo et infami judicio, in caussa aliqua celebri et gravi; praesertim ubi non absolvitur noxius, sed condemnatur insons. Etenim injuriae inter privatos grassantes turbant quidem et polluunt latices justitiae, sed tanquam in rivulis; verum judicia iniqua qualia diximus, a quibus exempla petuntur, fontes ipsos justitiae inficiunt et inquinant. Postquam enim tribunal cesserit in partes injustitiae, status rerum vertitur tanquam in latrocinium publicum: fitque plane, ut homo homini sit lupus.

Later also in J. Owen (died 1793):

“Homo homini lupus, homo homini deus” (Epigrammata,1606,III,23),

There are works such as the Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the 16th and 17th Centuries, of MP Tilley in which numerous references are given prior to Hobbes.

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) in his Ethica, IV, scholium of the second corollary of Proposition XXXV, says, thinking on Hobbes, that the phrase “Homo homini Deus” “was almost in all mouths” (omnibus fere in ore ), thus indicating the frequency and knowledge of the sentence in question.

Montaigne (1533-1592) in France, said in referring to marriage in Essais, III, ch.IV:

It is a convention to which it is referred timely manner  what is said,  , homo homini o Deus o lupus”

“C’est une convention à laquelle se raporte bien à point ce qu’on dict, homo homini o Deus o lupus”

Montaigne also, therefore, presents the sentence as something that often is said.

And in Spain Baltasar Gracian (1601-1658) in his Criticón, I, IV, page 32 of the edition of the Austral collection Espasa-Calpe, referring to men also used:

“Everyone is a wolf to the another”

“cada uno es un lobo para el otro”

At this point, after all these quotes, which  may seem too many to some readers, we can ask ourselves again: Did you read Hobbes the comedy of Plautus?

He could  read it, but if the words of Plautus had become a sentence and its dissemination was so extensive that it was almost on everyone’s lips, as Spinoza said and it was included in the collections of proverbs or phrases, Hobbes did not need the full knowledge of the Comedy of Plautus. Indeed it is likely that Hobbes  knew it from Erasmus, given the fame of his Adagia, or more likely from Bacon, with him Hobbes lived  even a few months; therefore he never demand   the authorship.

With this long exposure I have tried to deepen the origin of the phrase in question. We would now deepen the meaning of the phrases in each author and context, their proverbial use in Greek, on  Demophilus, ?, ¿Plautus, Caecilius, Virgil, Pliny and other Latin authors, Erasmus, Hobbes, etc.

I will not now thinking about the contents of sentences; I leave the reader the task; but instead I do want to leave a few open issues to the reader’s consideration.

The first question is the widespread belief in the ancient world according to which the gods are benefactors of the men  and hence the man who helps his fellow man is a god or similar to gods.

Man who favors his fellow man is also a god

This is also also in relation to  the “evergetism” (from  Greek εύεργετέω and  ευεργετισμός, meaning “doing good“, “to do good, to do  good works”) or benefactor function  of governors, rich and powerful, and to the deification of kings and leaders.

Is Pliny, contemptuous of the traditional gods, saying us that the only god who  exists for man is another man when he does good to his fellow men?

If the English translation of Hobbes “Homo homini lupus” is translated as “Man to Man is a kind of God“, are you saying that man is God, a god or something similar to God, something divine?
Or Is Hobbes saying something similar to what Pliny said, when he joins  in one sentence  “homo homini lupus” and “homo homini deus? That is, is Hobbes saying us  that man ceases to be a wolf to become God when he creates the state and social institutions that guarantee its survival and the bourgeois ideal of survival and reciprocity? That is, is Hobbes  more revolutionary  in the fund with the phrase homo homini deus than  his most successful phrase homo homini lupus might make believe?

In the author in whom  there is no doubt of the meaning of the phrase Homo homini deus est is the materialist Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872), for whom the idea of God is nothing but the alienated man projected towards a fictional being and far from humanity itself.

I think there are already many questions, there are several more, to finish an article too long. So I leave the answers to the will of the wise reader.

I shall exemplified a similar proverb with which the Spanish writer and philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, slightly changing the form  (there is also homo homini canis) and meaning  (the man, some men are like lapdogs in the service of another man) published in the Spanish magazine “Sphere” number 106, an article entitled “Homo hominis canis“, in which he said verbatim:

“Homo homini lupus, man is a wolf to man, Hobbes said, but it could very well be changed the aphorism and say: Homo hominis canis, man is a dog of man. And there are more canine or doggy men than or not lupins or wolfish men”.

“Homo homini lupus, el hombre es un lobo para el hombre, dijo Hobbes, pero podría muy bien cambiarse el aforismo y decir: Homo hominis canis, el hombre es un perro del hombre.Y hay más hombres caninos o perrunos que no lupinos o lobunos”.

The post Homo homini lupus (Man to man is an arrant wolf) / Homo homini deus (Man to man is a kind of God) appeared first on History of Greece and Rome.

In this culture the water, which was profusely used, was fundamental. So as necessary was than  sometimes the Romans transported it from springs at tens of kilometers through aqueducts and pipelines that continue to cause us a deep impression.

In the built city there are several essential elements: the square or forum, temples, civil administration buildings as the Basilica, and of course, the baht, spa or  “thermae”, sportive  and cultural complex where added to several pools to satisfy the desire of citizen pleasure there is also a gymnasium where the citizens train and keep the body fit.

Note: “thermae” meants “warm baths”, from Greek θερμός , thermos = warm, name that also we apply to the cooking vessel that keeps hot the food, especially the drinks.

In all of this, the Greek experience, which took several centuries ahead to initially rough Roman,  was fundamental. The Roman architect Vitruvius widely discussed in his De Architectura the conditions of urban buildings of the city in his book V especially.

Curious note: "gym-nasium," is originally a Greek word gymnasion, assigned to the Latin as "gymnasium”. It comes from gymnos (γυμνός), gymnos, meaning "naked" and refers to the practice of physical training and performing the various sports training naked. Who trains or practice gym exercise is the "gymnast".

Incidentally I would say that this nudity allows  anoint or smear the body with toning oil. That oil, mixed with natural sweat and sticky powder after training must  to be removed with a scraper which in Latin is called "strigilis". Recall the famous Greek statue of Lysippos “The Apoxyomenos”,  in which an athlete is being used that instrument. See http://www.antiquitatem.com/en/hadrian-thermae-roman-bads-strigilis

As I said, the relaxed Greek and eastern customs  soon were settled in the mighty Rome and were creating spas and gyms increasingly grandiose. Vitruvius spends  all Chapter 9 of Book V of his De architectura to the construction of these buildings:
Vitruvius 5.9.9 

As it appears that we have given an adequate account of them, next will follow descriptions of the arrangements of baths.  (Translate by Morris Hicky Morgan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. London: Humphrey Milford. Oxford University Press. 1914.)

Quoniam haec nobis satis videntur esse exposita, nunc insequentur balinearum dispositionum demonstrationes.

And he continues  specifying the conditions on chapter 10.

The first sports-cultural complex with  these large-scale characteristics  built in Rome was the one commanded by the Emperor Nero and which was opened the year 61.

The construction of these baths and gym  is told by the all the historians of the period, reflecting its grandeur, which also impressed the whole society. Martial,  the poet, who was born in Bilbilis, the current Calatayud in Spain, in the year 40 and went to Rome around the year 64, for return to his hometown 34 years later, where he died six years later,  uses  the reference as a synonym topic of great, as we will see below

We read texts that give us account of the event belonging to Tacitus, Suetonius and Dio Cassius.

Tacitus, XIV, 47

Nero, the same year, established a gymnasium, where oil was furnished to knights and senators after the lax fashion of the Greeks. (Translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb.Maxmillan and Co. London.1869)

gymnasium eo anno dedicatum a Nerone praebitumque oleum equiti ac senatui Graeca facilitate.

Suetonius, Nero, XII,3

He was the first who instituted, in imitation of the Greeks, a trial of skill in the three several exercises of music, wrestling, and horse-racing, to be performed at Rome every five years, and which he called Neronia. Upon the aedication of his bath and gymnasium, he furnished the senate and the equestrian order with oil. He appointed as judges of the trial men of consular rank, chosen by lot, who sat with the praetors. At this time he went down into the orchestra among the senators, and received the crown for the best performance in Latin prose and verse, for which several persons of the greatest merit contended, but they unanimously yielded to him. The crown for the best performer an the harp, being likewise awarded to him by the judges, he devoutly saluted it, and ordered it to be carried to the statue of Augustus. ( Translation by J. Eugene Reed. Alexander Thomson. Philadelphia. Gebbie & Co. 1889.)

Instituit et quinquennale certamen primus omnium Romae more Graeco triplex, musicum gymnicum equestre, quod appellauit Neronia; dedicatisque thermis atque gymnasio senatui quoque et equiti oleum praebuit. magistros toto certamini praeposuit consulares sorte, sede praetorum. deinde in orchestram senatumque descendit et orationis quidem carminisque Latini coronam, de qua honestissimus quisque contenderat, ipsorum consensu concessam sibi recepit, citharae autem a iudicibus ad se delatam adorauit ferrique ad Augusti statuam iussit.

Dio Cassius, LXI, 21

These things, then, he did to celebrate the shaving of his beard; and in behalf of his preservation and the continuance of his power, he instituted some quadriennial games, which he called Neronia. In honour of this event he also erected the gymnasium,6 and at its dedication made a free distribution of olive oil to the senators and knights. 2 The crown for lyre-playing he took without a contest; for all others were debarred, on the assumption that they were unworthy of being victors. And immediately, wearing the garb of this guild, he entered the gymnasium itself to be enrolled as victor. Thereafter all other crowns awarded as prizes for lyre-playing in all the contests were sent to him as the only artist worthy of victory. (Loeb Classical Library, 9 volumes, Greek texts and facing English translation: Harvard University Press, 1914 thru 1927. Translation by Earnest Cary.)

Martial, VII, 34

How does it possibly come, Severus, that Charinus, the worst rascal in the world, did one thing well ? Do you ask ? I will tell you, and briefly. What was worse than Nero ? What is better than Nero's warm baths ? See, at once some one of the malicious crowd is ready to say in sour tones : " What do you set above the many structures erected by our Master and God?" I set Nero's warm baths above the baths of a pathic. (Translation by Walter C. A. Ker, M.A. The Loeb Classical Library)

Quo possit fieri modo, Severe,
Ut vir pessimus omnium Charinus
Unam rem bene fecerit, requiris?
Dicam, sed cito. Quid Nerone peius?
Quid thermis melius Neronianis?
Non deest protinus, ecce, de malignis,
Qui sic rancidulo loquatur ore:
'Quid tu tot domini deique nostri
Praefers muneribus?' Neronianas
Thermas praefero balneis cinaedi.

Well, there is a curious anecdote of interest in connection with the inauguration of this complex. It is the appearance on the scene of the inauguration of a famous contemporary cynic philosopher, well respected by the intelligentsia of the moment by his moral integrity, Demetrius. This critical philosopher to the power, without mincing words and unwisely  ruined the opening ceremony thought for the greater glory of the emperor. The text, although living and descriptive, it is still cold and almost of attorney. It is necessary that the reader make a small stretch of the imagination, whom  can help to compare with picturesque and grotesque, contemporary current events, also needed of a "cynical" voice to reduce the "ego" of the governor.

Note: Although it is well known by the generality, let me informed reader, to comment that the word "ego" is  the  Latin person pronoun of first person, which we translate as "I". From it quite clear terms derived meaning, according to this etymology, as egoism" and "egotism",  egocentrism,…  So well known is the term than often we say about someone full of himself that he has "a highly developed ego".

Well Demetrius criticized the famous Baths of Nero inaugurated in 61 because unhygienic and very expensive in the same opening ceremony. At that time escaped the wrath of the Emperor, but when one year later the baths collapsed as a result of lightning, the words of Demetrius were considered the cause of the collapse and Demetrius was sent into exile by Tigellinus, the praetorian prefect (chief top police and executive arm) of Nero.

But it is better tell us all the ancient texts themselves:

About the  lightning,Tacitus tells us in Tacitus. Annales XV.22:

In the same consulate, the Gymnasium was struck by lightning and burned to the ground, a statue of Nero, which it contained, being melted into a shapeless piece of bronze.

Isdem consulibus gymnasium ictu fulminis conflagravit effigiesque in eo Neronis ad informe aes liquefacta.

And Philostratus, Life of Apollonius IV 42 (it is necessary that we will put in  a little imagination on our part to color the story):

Now Demetrius being attracted to Apollonius, as I have said above in my account of the events at Corinth, betook himself subsequently to Rome, and proceeded to court Apollonius, at the same time that he launched out against Nero. In consequence our sage's profession was looked at askance, and he was thought to have set Demetrius on to proceed thus, and the suspicion was increased on the occasion of Nero's completion of the most magnificent gymnasium in Rome:[1] for the auspicious day was being celebrated therein by Nero himself and the great Senate and all the knights of Rome, when Demetrius made his way into the gymnasium itself and delivered himself of a philippic against people who bathed, declaring that they enfeebled and polluted themselves; and he showed that such institutions were a useless expense.
He was only saved from immediate death as the penalty of such language by the fact that Nero was in extra good voice when he sang on that day, and he sang in the tavern which adjoined the gymnasium, naked except for a girdle round his waste, like any low tapster.
Demetrius, however, did not wholly escape the risk which he had courted by his language; for [the praetorian prefect] Tigellinus, to whom Nero had committed the power of life and death, proceeded to banish him from Rome, on the plea that he had ruined and overthrown the bath by the words he used; and he began to dog the steps of Apollonius secretly, in the hope that he would catch him out too in some compromising utterance.  (Translated by F.C. Conybeare)

It is easy to imagine the face that they would put the entire Roman high society, with Emperor Nero to his head, listening to the cynical gadfly Demetrius (Socrates, from whom he learned many things his pupil Antisthenes, founder of the Cynic school,  is considered by himself  in Plato's Apology of Socrates  a “gadfly”;  we would say today in more explicit language “pain in the neck” or more colloquial pain in the ass)  ruin the event with two heavy motivated reviews:  that is a waste of resource  and also in public bathrooms all you can catch is a disease …

Started our imaginative process, we can assume that at the opening ceremony not just "they cut the ribbon" but that senators and the other guests were bathed and smeared with oil.  Therefore gives us rise  the explicit reference of  the cited authors that Nero gave them the oil, at the Greek way.

It is also a cause for reflection the attitude of "policeman" Tigellinus regarding Apollonius secretly spy to catch him in the act and then, punch …

Without any doubt, it would have been very appropriate  in our time the presence of some cynical philosopher as Demetrius in the ghostly opening of an airport without airplanes, a freeway without cars or a bridge without river.
          …….
Postscript Note: First the word "posdata”, “postscript" means or refers to the "already offered, and given, and exposed," especially to the date or dating that closes the document and therefore I want to adjectival this note, because it comes to below the  text and date of the article.

Secondly with the note I want to explain the term "inaugurate", with them I headlined the article. The Romans, like many other  people, did not perform any action of public nor private importance unconnected with the feel of the gods. The augurs were the priests, from Etruscan origin,  who "predicted" or scrutinized the will of the gods or the future; the "omen" , augurium, figured in various ways, such as observing the flight of birds, operation called  “auspicium”, “auspices” from “avis”, bird,  and spicere, to see,  meant the agreement of the gods. The favorable omen,  augurium,  was especially necessary when engaging in battle;  do not forget that Rome is a great empire founded on the strength of their legions. Who had a "omens", a particularly favorable “augurium” was the emperor Octavian Caesar and because it he is called "Augustus", that means  something like "favored, loved by the gods."; "ausugustus" is translated into Greek as ἱερὸν, hieron, sacred.

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He lived in the manner of cynics, no frills, no attachment to wealth or power. Like other Greeks, he went to Rome, center of power,  as a young man in time of Emperor Caligula. He was a friend of Seneca and he won the respect of  the Roman  intellectuals, whose cliques he ran with remarkable success pronouncing his lectures.

Part of his life, reflected in a few texts allows us to recreate the atmosphere of tyranny and oppression to which they are subjected thinkers, philosophers, intellectuals when they dare to express their views freely and to criticize the actions of the powerful. This atmosphere of terror was especially oppressive under Domitian.

I reproduce a letter of Seneca to his friend Lucilius in which he records the affection and respect that he has to Demetrius:

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius LXII

We are deceived by those who would have us believe that a multitude of affairs blocks their pursuit of liberal studies; they make a pretence of their engagements, and multiply them, when their engagements are merely with themselves. As for me, Lucilius, my time is free; it is indeed free, and wherever I am, I am master of myself. For I do not surrender myself to my affairs, but loan myself to them, and I do not hunt out excuses for wasting my time. And wherever I am situated, I carry on my own meditations and ponder in my mind some wholesome thought.  When I give myself to my friends, I do not withdraw from my own company, nor do I linger with those who are associated with me through some special occasion or some case which arises from my official position. But I spend my time in the company of all the best; no matter in what lands they may have lived, or in what age, I let my thoughts fly to them.  Demetrius, for instance, the best of men, I take about with me, and, leaving the wearers of purple and fine linen, I talk with him, half-naked as he is, and hold him in high esteem. Why should I not hold him in high esteem? I have found that he lacks nothing. It is in the power of any man to despise all things, but of no man to possess all things. The shortest cut to riches is to despise riches. Our friend Demetrius, however, lives not merely as if he has learned to despise all things, but as if he has handed them over for others to possess. Farewell. (Translated by Richard Mott Gummere. A Loeb Classical Library edition; volume 1 published 1917)

Mentiuntur, qui sibi obstare ad studia liberali turbam negotiorum videri volunt; simulant occupationes et augent et ipsi se occupant. Vaco, Lucili, vaco et ubicumque sum, ibi meus sum. Rebus enim me non trado, sed commodo, nec consector perdendi temporis causas. Et quocumque constiti loco, ibi cogitationes meas tracto et aliquid in animo salutare converso.

Cum me amicis dedi non tamen mihi abduco, nec cum illis moror, quibus me tempus aliquod congregavit aut causa ex officio nata civili,  sed cum optimo quoque sum; ad illos, in quocumque loco, in quocumque saeculo fuerunt, animum meum mitto.

Demetrium, virorum optimum, mecum circumfero et relictis conchyliatis cum illo seminudo loquor, illum admiror. Quidni admirer? Vidi nihil ei deesse. Contemnere aliquis omnia potest, omnia habere nemo potest. Brevissima ad divitias per contemptum divitiarum via est. Demetrius autem noster sic vivit, non tamquam contempserit omnia, sed tamquam aliis habenda permiserit. Vale.

Philostratus  presents him in Corinth (circa 61) and as friend of Apollonius of Tiana, but this is not very reliable source for some, although Lucian attest their stay in Corinth in "Against ignorance, 19":

Philostratus, Life of Apollonius, IV, 25

Now there was in Corinth at that time a man named Demetrius, who studied philosophy and had embraced in his system all the masculine vigor of the Cynics. Of him Favorinus in several of his works subsequently made the most generous mention, and his attitude towards Apollonius was exactly that which they say Antisthenes took up towards the system of Socrates: for he followed him and was anxious to be his disciple, and was devoted to his doctrines, and converted to the side of Apollonius the more esteemed of his own pupils. (Translation by F.C. Conybeare,  1912, in the Loeb Classical Library).

He was banished at the first time by Tigellinus, the praetorian prefect of Nero in the year 62 because  his ironic comments critical to the monarchy, on the inauguration of a great gym for the emperor. See http://www.antiquitatem.com/en/nero-inaugurates-a-gym-demetrius

At the same time he was also banished another cynical called Isidore, whom also I will comment.
On a occasion  the emperor Caligula (governed from 37 to 41) wanted to make him a gift with a small amount of money that the proud philosopher rejected. Seneca tells us, On Duties VII, 11.1-2:

When, therefore, Gaius Caesar offered him two hundred thousand sesterces, he laughingly refused it, thinking it unworthy of himself to boast of having refused so small a sum. Ye gods and goddesses, what a mean mind must the emperor have had, if he hoped either to honour or to corrupt him. I must here repeat a proof of his magnanimity. I have heard that when he was expressing his wonder at the folly of Gaius at supposing that he could be influenced by such a bribe, he said, "If he meant to tempt me, he ought to have tried to do so by offering his entire kingdom."(Translated by Aubrey StewartTranslated 1887)

De beneficiis VII,11,1-2

Itaque cum C.1 Caesar illi ducenta donaret, ridens reiecit ne dignam quidem summam iudicans, qua non accepta gloriaretur. Di deaeque, quam pusillo animo illum aut honorare voluit aut corrumpere ! Reddendum egregio viro testimonium est ; ingentem rem ab illo dici audivi, cum miraretur Gai dementiam, quod se putasset tanti posse mutari. " Si temptare," inquit, " me constituerat, toto illi fui experiendus imperio."

Demetrius criticized the famous Baths of Nero inaugurated in 61 because unhygienic and excessively costly. When a year later collapsed as a result of lightning, the words of Demetrius were considered  the cause of the collapse  and Demetrius was sent into exile by Tigellinus, the praetorian prefect (the chief of police and executive arm) of Nero.

Philostratus tells us in Life of Apollonius IV 42.

Now Demetrius being attracted to Apollonius, as I have said above in my account of the events at Corinth, betook himself subsequently to Rome, and proceeded to court Apollonius, at the same time that he launched out against Nero. In consequence our sage's profession was looked at askance, and he was thought to have set Demetrius on to proceed thus, and the suspicion was increased on the occasion of Nero's completion of the most magnificent gymnasium in Rome: for the auspicious day was being celebrated therein by Nero himself and the great Senate and all the knights of Rome, when Demetrius made his way into the gymnasium itself and delivered himself of a philippic against people who bathed, declaring that they enfeebled and polluted themselves; and he showed that such institutions were a useless expense.

He was only saved from immediate death as the penalty of such language by the fact that Nero was in extra good voice when he sang on that day, and he sang in the tavern which adjoined the gymnasium, naked except for a girdle round his waste, like any low tapster.
Demetrius, however, did not wholly escape the risk which he had courted by his language; for [the praetorian prefect] Tigellinus, to whom Nero had committed the power of life and death, proceeded to banish him from Rome, on the plea that he had ruined and overthrown the bath by the words he used; and he began to dog the steps of Apollonius secretly, in the hope that he would catch him out too in some compromising utterance. (Translation by F.C. Conybeare,  1912, in the Loeb Classical Library

Philostratus again gives us some reason why the Emperor Nero didn’t sentenced to death Demetrius and other sophists. He says it in Life of Apollonius VII 16:

"My sovereign, sophists ar all prattle and flippancy; and their art is all show, and they are so eager to die because they get no good out of life; and therefore they don't wait for death to come of itself, but try to anticipate and draw it on themselves by provoking those who hold the sword.

This I think was the reason which weighed with Nero and prevented his being drawn on by Demetrius into slaying him. For as he saw that he was anxious for death, he let him off not because he wished to pardon him, but because he disdained to put him to death. Moreover in the case of Musonius the Tyrrhenian, who opposed his rule in many ways, he only kept him in the island called Gyara. (Translation by F.C. Conybeare,  1912, in the Loeb Classical Library)

There is also a story  of Philostratus that relates  Demetrius to Musonius Rufus, master of Epictetus. On the occasion of the conspiracy of Piso against Nero on 65-66 year, Seneca was forced to suicide opening veins with his wife Pompeia Paulina and his  nephew Lucanus. For the same reason they were expelled from Rome philosophers, especially the Stoics, among them Musonius Rufus, master of Epictetus.

Phiostratus, an  unreliable source, as I said, according to some authors, makes the two men coincide in Greece: Musonius was there condemned to dig the Isthmus of Corinth, as a thousand times it has happened with prisoners and dissidents sentenced to hard labor for building  great and dangerous public works.

The story, despite its curious interest does not seem very credible to the historians, although they are no serious grounds to doubt; in any case we will read the text of Philostratus, Life of Apollonius V, 19:

At Athens he was initiated by the same hierophant of whom he had delivered a prophecy to his predecessor; here he met Demetrius the philosopher, for after the episode of Nero's bath and of his speech about it, Demetrius continued to live at Athens, with such noble courage that he did not quit Athens even during the period when Nero was outraging Greece over the games.

Demetrius said that he had fallen in with Musonius at the Isthmus, where he was fettered and under orders to dig; and that he addressed to him such consolations as he could, but Musonius took his spade and stoutly dug it into the earth, and then looking up, said: "You are distressed, Demetrius, to see me digging through the Isthmus for Greece; but if you saw me playing the harp like Nero, what would you feel then?"

But I must pass over the sayings of Musonius, though they were many and remarkable, else I shall seem to take liberties with the man, who uttered them carelessly. (Translation by F.C. Conybeare,  1912, in the Loeb Classical Library)

This conspiracy also led the condemnation of  Barea Soranus and Thrasea Petus, patrician, stoic, who was master of Demetrius, who comforted him at the time and day when the sentence came.
Thrasea is who uttered the phrase, according to Epictetus:

"I would rather be killed to-day than banished to-morrow."

Epictetus recommends accept things as they come with wise stoicism. Discourses I, 1, 21

…..What then should a man have in readiness in such circumstances? What else than "What is mine, and what is not mine; and permitted to me, and what is not permitted to me." I must die. Must I then die lamenting? I must be put in chains. Must I then also lament? I must go into exile. Does any man then hinder me from going with smiles and cheerfulness and contentment? "Tell me the secret which you possess." I will not, for this is in my power. "But I will put you in chains." Man, what are you talking about? Me in chains? You may fetter my leg, but my will not even Zeus himself can overpower. "I will throw you into prison." My poor body, you mean. "I will cut your head off." When, then, have I told you that my head alone cannot be cut off? These are the things which philosophers should meditate on, which they should write daily, in which they should exercise themselves.

Thrasea used to say, "I would rather be killed to-day than banished to-morrow." What, then, did Rufus say to him? "If you choose death as the heavier misfortune, how great is the folly of your choice? But if, as the lighter, who has given you the choice? Will you not study to be content with that which has been given to you?"  (Translation by George Long)

I will transcribe the information that Tacitus gives us in his Annals about  the decision  and death of Thraseas, an episode that still moves us today.
 
Tacitus, Annals, XVI, 21

Nero after having butchered so many illustrious men, at last aspired to extirpate virtue itself by murdering Thrasea Pætus and Barea Soranus. Both men he had hated of old, Thrasea on additional grounds, because he had walked out of the Senate when Agrippina's case was under discussion, as I have already related, and had not given the Juvenile games any conspicuous encouragement. Nero's displeasure at this was the deeper, since this same Thrasea had sung in a tragedian's dress at Patavium, his birth-place, in some games instituted by the Trojan Antenor. On the day, too, on which the prætor Antistius was being sentenced to death for libels on Nero, Thrasea proposed and carried a more merciful decision. Again, when divine honours were decreed to Poppæa, he was purposely absent and did not attend her funeral. All this Capito Cossutianus would not allow to be forgotten. He had a heart eager for the worst wickedness, and he also bore ill-will to Thrasea, the weight of whose influence had crushed him, while envoys from Cilicia supported by Thrasea's advocacy, were accusing him of extortion.

34
Then, as evening approached, the consul's quæstor was sent to Thrasea, who was passing his time in his garden. He had had a crowded gathering of distinguished men and women, giving special attention to Demetrius, a professor of the Cynic philosophy. With him, as might be inferred from his earnest expression of face and from words heard when they raised their voices, he was speculating on the nature of the soul and on the separation of the spirit from the body, till Domitius Cæcilianus, one of his intimate friends, came to him and told him in detail what the Senate had decided. When all who were present, wept and bitterly complained, Thrasea urged them to hasten their departure and not mingle their own perils with the fate of a doomed man. Arria, too, who aspired to follow her husband's end and the example of Arria, her mother, he counselled to preserve her life, and not rob the daughter of their love of her only stay.

35
Then he went out into a colonnade, where he was found by the quæstor, joyful rather than otherwise, as he had learnt that Helvidius, his son-in-law, was merely excluded from Italy. When he heard the Senate's decision, he led Helvidius and Demetrius into a chamber, and having laid bare the arteries of each arm, he let the blood flow freely, and, as he sprinkled it on the ground, he called the quæstor to his side and said, "We pour out a libation to Jupiter the Deliverer. Behold, young man, and may the gods avert the omen, but you have been born into times in which it is well to fortify the spirit with examples of courage." Then as the slowness of his end brought with it grievous anguish, turning his eyes on Demetrius. . . . (Complete Works of Tacitus. Tacitus. Alfred John Church. William Jackson Brodribb. Sara Bryant.)

Annales, XVI,21

Trucidatis tot insignibus viris ad postremum Nero virtutem ipsam excindere concupivit interfecto Thrasea Paeto et Barea Sorano, olim utrisque infensus et accedentibus causis in Thraseam, quod senatu egressus est cum de Agrippina referretur, ut memoravi, quodque Iuvenalium ludicro parum spectabilem operam praebuerat; eaque offensio altius penetrabat, quia idem Thrasea Patavi, unde ortus erat, ludis †cetastis† a Troiano Antenore institutis habitu tragico cecinerat. die quoque quo praetor Antistius ob probra in Neronem composita ad mortem damnabatur, mitiora censuit obtinuitque; et cum deum honores Poppaeae decernuntur sponte absens, funeri non interfuerat. quae oblitterari non sinebat Capito Cossutianus, praeter animum ad flagitia praecipitem iniquus Thraseae quod auctoritate eius concidisset, iuvantis Cilicum legatos dum Capitonem repetundarum interrogant.

XVI, 34
Tum ad Thraseam in hortis agentem quaestor consulis missus vesperascente iam die. inlustrium virorum feminarumque coetus frequentis egerat, maxime intentus Demetrio Cynicae institutionis doctori, cum quo, ut coniectare erat intentione vultus et auditis, si qua clarius proloquebantur, de natura animae et dissociatione spiritus corporisque inquirebat, donec advenit Domitius Caecilianus ex intimis amicis et ei quid senatus censuisset exposuit. igitur flentis queritantisque qui aderant facessere propere Thrasea neu pericula sua miscere cum sorte damnati hortatur, Arriamque temptantem mariti suprema et exemplum Arriae matris sequi monet retinere vitam filiaeque communi subsidium unicum non adimere.

XVI, 35
Tum progressus in porticum illic a quaestore reperitur, laetitiae propior, quia Helvidium generum suum Italia tantum arceri cognoverat. accepto dehinc senatus consulto Helvidium et Demetrium in cubiculum inducit; porrectisque utriusque brachii venis, postquam cruorem effudit, humum super spargens, propius vocato quaestore 'libamus' inquit 'Iovi liberatori. specta, iuvenis; et omen quidem dii prohibeant, ceterum in ea tempora natus es quibus firmare animum expediat constantibus exemplis.' post lentitudine exitus gravis cruciatus adferente, obversis in Demetrium …
At this point the Annals are broken off because surely the death of its author prevented him from continuing.  The missing lines in the codex  free us to attend the end of  so dramatic episode.

But I do not will deprive interested readers of another fragment of the work of Suetonius, that shows the cruelty with which Nero ordered suicides. Suetonius tells us, ( his work, in which mainly anecdotes are collected, must be read critically, knowing that, as secretary of Hadrian, he  had before official archives).

Suetonius, Nero 37

The only charge objected against Paetus Thrasea was, that he had a melancholy cast of features, and looked like a school-master. He allowed but one hour to those whom he obliged to kill themselves; and, to prevent delay, he sent them physicians " to cure them immediately, if they lingered beyond that time ;" for so he called bleeding them to death. There was at that time an Egyptian of a most voracious appetite, who would digest raw flesh, or any thing else that was given him. It was credibly reported, that the emperor was extremely desirous of furnishing him with living men to tear and devour. Being elated with his great success in the perpetration of crimes, he declared. " that no prince before himself ever knew the extent of his power." (Suetonius: The Lives of the Twelve Caesars; An English Translation,  Publishing Editor. J. Eugene Reed. Alexander Thomson. Philadelphia. Gebbie & Co. 1889.)

(37.1)…Paeto Thraseae tristior et paedagogi uultus.
(37.2) mori iussis non amplius quam horarum spatium dabat; ac ne quid morae interueniret, medicos admouebat qui cunctantes continuo curarent: ita enim uocabatur uenas mortis gratia incidere. creditur etiam polyphago cuidam Aegypti generis crudam carnem et quidquid daretur mandere assueto, concupisse uiuos homines laniandos absumendosque obicere.
(37.3)elatus inflatusque tantis uelut successibus negauit “quemquam principum scisse quid sibi liceret”,

But against these powerful dictators, free men, as  Demetrius, can tell them, as Arrian tells in Epictetus, Discourses I , 25.21 to 23:

I will live in Gyarus, but it seems like a great smoke to live in Gyarus; and I depart to the place where no man will hinder me from living, for that dwelling place is open to all; and as to the last garment, that is the poor body, no one has any power over me beyond this. This was the reason why Demetrius said to Nero, “You threaten me with death, but nature threatens you.” (George Long. translator. London. George Bell and Sons. 1890.)

In the year 75, under the emperor Vespasian, he was expelled for the second time, together with other philosophers, to the Cyclades islands. Some think that the expulsion was in the year 71 according to Dio Cassius 65 (66) 13 and Suetonius, Vespasian 13.

We read the text of Dio Cassius, Roman History 65 (66) 12 et seq.

Helvidius Priscus, the son-in law of Thrasea, had been brought up in the doctrines of the Stoics and imitated Thrasea's frankness of speech, sometimes unseasonably. He was at this time praetor, but instead of doing aught to increase the honour due to the emperor he would not cease reviling him. Therefore the tribunes once arrested him and gave him in charge of their assistants, a procedure at which Vespasian was overcome by emotion went out of the senate-chamber in tears, saying merely: "My successor shall be my son or no one at all."

Inasmuch as many others, too, including Demetrius the Cynic, actuated by the Stoic principles, were taking advantage of the name of philosophy to teach publicly many doctrines inappropriate to the times, and in this way were subtly corrupting some of their hearers, Mucianus, prompted rather by anger than by any passion for philosophy, inveighed at length against them and persuaded Vespasian to expel all such persons from the city.
…..
Mucianus made a great number of remarkable statements to Vespasian against the Stoics, asserting, for instance, that they are full of empty boasting, and that if one of them lets his beard grow long, elevates his eyebrows, wears his coarse brown mantle thrown back over his shoulder and goes barefooted, he straightway lays claim to wisdom, bravery and righteousness, and gives himself great airs, even though he may not know either his letters or how to swim, as the saying goes. They look down upon everybody and call a man of good family a mollycoddle, the low-born slender-witted, a handsome person licentious, an ugly person a simpleton, the rich man greedy, and the poor man servile.

And Vespasian immediately expelled from Rome all the philosophers except Musonius; Demetrius and Hostilianus he even deported to islands. Hostilianus, though he decidedly would not desist when he was told about the sentence of exile (he happened to be conversing with somebody), but merely inveighed all the more strongly against monarchy, nevertheless straightway withdrew.  Demetrius, on the contrary, would not yield even then, and Vespasian commanded that this message should be given to him: "You are doing everything to force me to kill you, but I do not slay a barking dog."

It became strikingly clear that Vespasian hated Helvidius Priscus, not so much on his own account or that of his friends whom the man had abused, as because he was a turbulent fellow who cultivated the favour of the rabble and was for ever denouncing royalty and praising democracy. Helvidius' behaviour, moreover, was consistent with this opinion of him; for he banded various men together, as if it were the function of philosophy to insult those in power, to stir up the multitudes, to overthrow the established order of things, and to bring about a revolution.  He was Thrasea's son-in law and affected to emulate his conduct, but he fell far short of doing so. For whereas Thrasea, though living in Nero's time and displeased with him, nevertheless had neither said nor done anything that was insulting to him, save merely that he refused to share in his practices, Helvidius, on the other hand, bore a grudge against Vespasian and would not let him alone either in private or in public. Thus by his conduct he was courting death and by his meddlesome interference he was destined eventually to pay the penalty. (Loeb Classical Library, 9 volumes, Greek texts and facing English translation: Harvard University Press, 1914 thru 1927. Translation by Earnest Cary.)

It's funny how similar  I find this fearful attitude of power against anyone  movement and social behavior at the time, with which personally I experienced ( I am old few years) in the aftermath of  Franco dictatorship in Spain: long beard, different clothing to conventional, They meddle with everyone, pick on everyone, persuade people with their talk ,  etc.)

But Suetonius paints us Vespasian as caring and benevolent, against the use of excessive punishment. About Demetrius and Vespasian he says:

Suetonius, Vespasian 13:

Demetrius, the Cynic philosopher,1 who had been sentenced to banishment, meeting him on the road, and refusing to rise up or salute him, nay, snarling at him in scurrilous language, he only called him a cur. (English Translation, Publishing Editor. J. Eugene Reed. Alexander Thomson. Philadelphia. Gebbie & Co. 1889.)

Demetrium Cynicum in itinere obuium sibi post damnationem ac neque assurgere neque salutare se dignantem, oblatrantem etiam nescio quid, satis habuit canem appellare.

His relationship with Titus seems to have been better. Philostratus tells us how Apollonius recommended  Titus that he should serve of the teachings of the master Demetrius. He tells us in his Life of Apollonius, VI, 31

"And for myself, O man of Tyana," answered Titus, "can you give me any precepts as to how to rule and exercise the authority of a sovereign?"

"Only such rules," replied the other, "as you have laid upon yourself; for in so submitting yourself to your father's will, it is, I think, certain that you will grow like him. And I should like to repeat to you on this occasion a saying of Archytas, which is a noble one and worth committing to memory. Archytas was a man of Tarentum who was learned in the lore of Pythagoras, and he wrote a treatise on the education of children, in which he says:

Let the father be an example of virtue to his children, for fathers also will the more resolutely walk in the path of virtue because their children are coming to resemble them.
But for myself, I propose to associate with you my own companion Demetrius, who will attend you as much as you like and instruct you in the whole duty of a good ruler."

"And what sort of wisdom, O Apollonius, does this person possess?"

"Courage," he replied, "to speak the truth unabashed by anyone, for he possesses the constancy and strength of character of a cynic."

And as Titus did not seem very pleased to hear the name of dog,[1] he continued: "And yet in Homer, Telemachus, when he was young, required, it appears, two dogs, and the poet sends these to accompany the youth to the market place of Ithaca, in spite of their being irrational animals; but you will have a dog to accompany you who will bark in your behalf not only at other people, but at yourself in case you go wrong, and he will bark withal wisely, and never irrationally."

"Well," said the other, "give me your dog to accompany me, and I will even let him bite me, in case he feels I am committing injustice."

"I will write him a letter, for he teaches philosophy in Rome."

"Pray do so," said Titus, "and I wish I could get someone to write to you in my behalf, and induce you to share with me my journey to Rome."

"I will come there," said the other, "whenever it is best for both of us." (Translation by F.C. Conybeare,  1912, in the Loeb Classical Library).

And little later, in Life of Apollonius VI 33, he gives us the letter:

But the letter to Demetrius ran as follows:

"Apollonius, the Philosopher, sends greeting to Demetrius the cynic.
     I have made a present of you to the Emperor Titus, that you may instruct him how to behave as a sovereign, and take care that you confirm the truth of my words to him, and make yourself, anger apart, everything to him. Farewell." (Translation by F.C. Conybeare,  1912, in the Loeb Classical Library).

In the year 75 Titus wants to marry Jewish princess Berenice, a relationship that the people do not look kindly; Diogenes the Sophist and a certain Heras criticized in the theater the vices of the emperors and that fed the royal anger and they were punished for it, as Cassius Dio tells us, Roman History LXV 15, 3-5:

Berenice was at the very height of her power and consequently came to Rome along with her brother Agrippa. 4 The latter was given the rank of praetor, while she dwelt in the palace, cohabiting with Titus. She expected to marry him and was already behaving in every respect as if she were his wife; but when he perceived that the Romans were displeased with the situation, he sent her away. 5 For, in addition to all the other talk that there was, certain sophists of the Cynic school managed somehow to slip into the city at this time, too; and first Diogenes, entering the theatre when it was full, denounced the pair in a long, abusive speech, for which he was flogged; and after him Heras, expecting no harsher punishment, gave vent to many senseless yelpings in true Cynic fashion, and for this was beheaded. (Loeb Classical Library, 9 volumes, Greek texts and facing English translation: Harvard University Press, 1914 thru 1927. Translation by Earnest Cary.)

Demetrius perhaps lived until the time of Domitian, who created a great  atmosphere of terror. To  Domitian  they were  awarded two ejections of philosophers (philosophy proved to be a high risk activity) and also astrologers and "mathematical",  term that may relate to teachers in general. The first took place in the year 89 and the second, more violent, in 93/95. Let's see what Dio Cassius says in History of Rome LXVII 13.2:

As censor, likewise, his behaviour was noteworthy. He expelled Caecilius Rufinus from the senate because he acted pantomimes, and rest Claudius Pacatus, though an ex-centurion, to his master, because he was proved to be a slave.  But the deeds now to be related — deeds which he performed as emperor — cannot be described in similar terms. I refer to his killing of Arulenus Rusticus because he was a philosopher and because he called Thrasea holy, and to his slaying of Herennius Senecio because in his long career he had stood for no office after his quaestorship and because he had written the biography of Helvidius Priscus.  Many others also perished as a result of this same charge of philosophizing, and all the philosophers that were left in Rome were banished once more. One Juventius Celsus, however, who had taken a leading part in conspiring with certain others against Domitian and had been accused of this, saved his life in a remarkable way.  When he was on the point of being condemned, he begged that he might speak to the emperor in private, and thereupon did obeisance before him and after repeatedly calling him "master" and "god" (terms that were already being applied to him by others), he said: "I have done not of this sort, but if I obtain a respite, I will pry into everything and will not only bring information against many persons for you but also secure their conviction." He was released on this condition, but did not report any one; instead, by adding different excuses at different times, he lived until the death of Domitian. (Loeb Classical Library, 9 volumes, Greek texts and facing English translation: Harvard University Press, 1914 thru 1927. Translation by Earnest Cary.)

The following text of Philostratus perfectly describes the atmosphere of concern and fear in which many times they they have been numerous intellectuals, awaiting the decision of the tyrant and doubting whether to run away to be spared.

Philostratus, Life of Apollonius VII 10-12

… and having landed at Corinth and worshipped the Sun about midday, with his usual rites, embarked in the evening for Sicily and Italy. And falling in with a favorable wind and a good current that ran in his direction, he reached Dicaearchia [Puteoli] on the fifth day.
There he met Demetrius who passed for being the boldest of the philosophers, simply because he did not live far away from Rome, and knowing that he had moved to get out of the way of the tyrant, yet said by way of amusing himself: "I have caught you in your luxury, dwelling here in the most blessed part of happy Italy, if indeed she be happy, here where Odysseus is said to have forgotten in the company of Calypso the smoke of his Ithacan home."

Thereupon Demetrius embraced him and after sundry pious ejaculations said: "O ye gods, what will come upon philosophy, if she risks the loss of such a man as yourself?"

"And what risks does she run?" asked he.

"Those, surely, a foreknowledge of which brought you here," said the other; "for if I do not know what is in your mind, then I do not know what is in my own. But let us not conduct our conversation here, but let us retire where we can talk together alone, and let only Damis be present whom, by Heracles, I am inclined to consider an Iolaus  of your labors."

With these words, Demetrius led them to the villa in which [the Roman orator] Cicero lived of old, and it is close by the city. There they sat down under a plane tree where the grasshoppers were chirping to the soft music of the summer's breeze, when Demetrius glancing up at them, remarked: "O ye blessed insects and unfeignedly wise, it would seem then that the Muses have taught you a song which is neither actionable, nor likely to be informed against; and they made you superior to all wants of the belly, and settled you far above all human envy to live in these trees, in which you sit and sing in your blessedness about your own and the Muses' prerogative of happiness." 

Now Apollonius understood the drift of this apostrophe, but it jarred upon him as inconsistent with the strenuous professions of his friend. "It seems then," he said, "that, though you only wanted to sing the praises of grasshoppers, you could not do it openly, but came cowering hither, as if there were a public law against anyone praising the grasshoppers."

"I said what I did," he replied, "not by way of praising them, but of signifying that while they are left unmolested in their concert halls, we are not allowed even to mutter; for wisdom has been rendered a penal offense. And whereas the indictment of Anytus and Meletus ran: Socrates commits wrong in corrupting youth and introducing a new religion, we are indicted in such terms as these: So and so commits wrong by being wise and just and gifted with understanding of the gods no less than of men, and with a wide knowledge of the laws.

And as for yourself, so far forth as you are cleverer and wiser than the rest of us, so much the more cleverly is the indictment against you drawn up; for Domitian intends to implicate you in the charges for which Nerva and his associates were banished."

"But for what crime," said Apollonius, "are they banished?"

"For what is reckoned by the persecutor to be the greatest of latter-day crimes. He says that he has caught these persons in the act of trying to usurp his throne, and accuses you of instigating their attempt by mutilating, I think, a boy."

"What, as if it were by an eunuch, that I want his empire overthrown?"

"It is not that," he replied, "of which we are falsely accused; but they declare that you sacrificed a boy to divine the secrets of futurity which are to be learned from an inspection of youthful entrails; and in the indictment your dress and manner of life are also impugned, and the fact of your being an object of worship to some. This then is what I have heard from our Telesinus, no less your intimate than mine."

"What luck," exclaimed Apollonius, "if we could meet Telesinus: for I suppose you mean the philosopher who held consular rank in the reign of Nero."

"The same," he said, "but how are we to come across him? For despots are doubly suspicious of any man of rank, should they find him holding communication with people who lie under such an accusation as you do. And Telesinus, moreover, gave way quietly before the edict which has lately been issued against philosophers of every kind, because he preferred to be in exile as a philosopher, to remain in Rome as a consul."

"I would not have him run any risks on my account anyhow," said Apollonius, "for the risks he runs in behalf of philosophy are serious enough.

But tell me this, Demetrius, what do you think I had better say or do in order to allay my own fears?"

"You had better not trifle," said the other, "nor pretend to be afraid when you foresee danger; for if you really thought these accusations terrifying, you would have been away by now and evaded the necessity of defending yourself from them."

"And would you run away," said Apollonius, "if you were placed in the same danger as myself?"

"I would not," he replied, "I swear by Athena, if there were someone to judge me; but in fact there is no fair trial, and if I did offer a defense, no one would even listen to me; or if I were listened to, I should be slain all the more certainly because I was known to be innocent. You would not, I suppose, care to see me choose so cold-blooded and lavish a death as that, rather than one which befits a philosopher.

And I imagine that it behoves a philosopher to die in the attempt to liberate his city or to protect his parents and children and brothers and other kinsfolk, or to die struggling for his friends, who in the eyes of the wise are more precious than mere kinsfolk, or for favorites that have been purchased by love. But to be put to death not for true reasons, but for fancy ones, and to furnish the tyrant with a pretext for being considered wise, is much worse and more grievous than to be bowed and bent high in the sky on a wheel, as they say Ixion was.
But it seems to me the very fact of your coming here will be the beginning of your trial; for though you may attribute your journey hither to your quiet conscience, and to the fact that you would have never ventured upon it if you were guilty, Domitian will credit you with nothing of the kind; but will merely believe that you ventured on so hardy a course because you possess some mysterious power. For think, ten days, they say, have not elapsed since you were cited to appear, and you turn up at the court, without even having heard as yet that you were to undergo a trial.

Will not that be tantamount to justifying the accusation, for everyone will think that you foreknew the event, and the story of the boy will gain credit therefrom? And take care that the discourse which the say you delivered about the Fates and Necessity in Ionia does not come true of yourself; and that, in case destiny has some cruelty in store, you are not marching straight to meet it with your hands tied, just because you won't see that discretion is the better part of valor.

And if you have not forgotten the affairs of Nero's reign, you will remember my own case, and that I showed no coward's dread of death. But then one gained some respite: for although Nero's harp was ill attuned to the dignity that befits a king, and clashed therewith, yet in other ways its music harmonized not unpleasantly with ours, for he was induced thereby to grant a truce to his victims, and stay his murderous hand. At any rate he did not slay me, although I attracted his sword to myself as much by your discourses as by my own, which were delivered against the bath; and the reason why he did not slay me was that just then his voice improved, and he achieved, as he thought, a brilliant melody.

But where's the royal nightingale, and where the harp to which we can today make our peace-offerings? For the outlook of today is unredeemed by music, and full of spleen, and this tyrant is as little likely to be charmed by himself, as by other people. It is true that Pindar says in praise of the lyre that it charms the savage beast of [the war god] Ares and stays his hand from war; but this ruler, although he has established a musical contest in Rome, and offers a civic crown for those who win therein, nevertheless slew some of them, for whom it was the proverbial swan-sung that they piped or sang.

And you should also consider our friends and their safety, for you will certainly ruin them as well as yourself, if you make a show of being brave, or use arguments which will not be listened to.

But your life lies within your reach; for here are ships -you see how many there are- some about to sail for Libya, others for Egypt, others for Phoenicia and Cyprus, others direct to Sardinia, other still for places beyond Sardinia. It were best for you to embark on one of these provinces; for the hand of tyranny is less heavy upon these distinguished men, if it perceives that they only desire to live quietly and not put themselves forward."

Damis was so impressed by the arguments of Demetrius that he exclaimed:
(Translation by F.C. Conybeare,  1912, in the Loeb Classical Library).

The following text describes the anguish of those who, feeling persecuted, feared engage others with their mere contact and relationship. How many times they should have produced similar situations, given the inaction of the remaining citizens.

Let us read Philostratus, VII, 14-15:
I know, Demetrius, how clever you are at chopping logic, and this, I believe, is why you will tender me some further advice, such as this: But you must not resort to those you have named, but to men with whom you have never had anything to do, and then your flight will be secure; for you will find it easier to lie hidden among people who do not know you.
Well, let me examine this argument too, and see whether there is anything in it. For this is how I regard it: I consider that a wise man does nothing in private nor by himself alone; I hold that not even his inmost thoughts can be so devoid of witness, that he himself at least is not present with himself; and whether the Pythian inscription was suggested by Apollo himself, or by some man who had a healthy conscience, and was therefore minded to publish it as an aphorism for all, I hold that the sage who 'knows himself, and has his own conscience as his perpetual companion, will never cower before things that scare the many, nor venture upon courses which others would engage upon without shame. For being the slaves of despots, they have been ready at times to betray to them even their dearest; because just as they trembled at imaginary terrors, so they felt no fear where they should have trembled.

But Wisdom allows of none these things.
……..
I think then that I have clearly shown you, and that truth itself will convince you, that my conscience will convict me wherever I go, whether to people that know me, or to people that do not, supposing I were to betray my friends; but I will not betray even myself, but I will boldly wrestle with the tyrant, hailing him with the words of the noble Homer: Ares is as much my friend as thine."

Damis was so impressed by this address, he tells us, that he took fresh resolution and courage, and Demetrius no longer despaired of Apollonius, but rather praising and agreeing with his appeal, wished godspeed to him in his perilous enterprise and to his mistress Philosophy for whose sake he braved so much.

And he led them, Damis says, to where he was lodging; but Apollonius declined and said: "It is now eventide, and about the time of the lighting up of the lamps and I must set out for the port of Rome, for this is the usual hour at which these ships sail. However we will dine together another time, when my affairs are on a better footing; for just now some charge would be trumped up against yourself of having dined with an enemy of the Emperor. Nor must you come down to the harbor with us, lest you should be accused, merely for having conversed with me, of harboring criminal designs."

Demetrius accordingly consented, and after embracing them he quitted them, though he often turned back to look towards them and wiped tears from his eyes. (Translation by F.C. Conybeare,  1912, in the Loeb Classical Library).

Demetrius died around AD 90. He had a long life; certainly he could overcome the pitfalls with skill and the help of the goddess Fortuna.

The post Demetrius the Cynic and his relationship with Emperors Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, Titus and …., Domitian? (Intellectuals against the power) appeared first on History of Greece and Rome.

They came then all sorts of ideas and theories about the nature and the man himself and various schools, which are often identified by the place where they met and  their teachers taught their doctrines : Academics because Plato taught in the land that was property of certain  Academos (see  http://www.antiquitatem.com/en/platonic-academy-lyceum-tusculanea ), Peripatetics (περιπατητικοί) from περι, peri, around, and πατειν, patein, to walk, because Aristotle taught walking in a garden near the temple of ,Apollo Licius, ie the Lyceum; Stoics from Στωϊκός, Stoikos because Zeno preached his own disciples in the "Poikile stoa" Ποικίλη Στοά, or Painted Porch.

There are some philosophers, the Cynics, the dogs, from κύων kyon 'dog', who may also receive the name from the place where he taught the first founder, Antisthenes, in the gym called Cinosargos, Kyon-Argos, agile dog, although certainly the name also came given by the peculiarities of their  anti ideas, which  failed to be translated into an elaborate theory, but consisted  of simple maxims that define life in society freely and without prejudice. Like dogs, the cynics live in society, but on their own, without participating in social conventions, with their life according to the animal nature, reluctant to join the group, etc.  resenting  barking, grateful to whom gives anything, etc.

When Alexander asked Diogenes of Sinope, the most famous of the cynics, whom I dedicate this article, why he was called "dog" "cynic",  another Diognes, now Laertius tells us  in his "Lives and opinions of the philosophers, VI, 60:

Alexander once came and stood opposite him and said, " I am Alexander the great king." " And I," said he, " am Diogenes the Cynic." Being asked what he had done to be called a hound, he said, " I fawn on those who give me anything, I yelp at those who refuse, and I set my teeth in rascals." (Translation by R.D. Hicks, M.A.  London: William Heinemann, New York:Putnam’s son)

Then the king sent a bowl full of bones, and as it is told in the Gnomologium Vaticanum (E Codice Vatican Graeco 743), n.96 (it also is told in the Florilegium  Monacense, 155 and in Eustathius to Homer, Odyssey VI 148)

King Alexander at once fill a tray of bones and sent to Diogenes the Cynic. And this, receiving it,  said: "The food is cynic, but the gift is not royal."

The Cynics have been mistreated by history, since ancient times, no doubt because they are anti-system and represent the anarchist thinking, the libertarian thought of antiquity: no gods, no rulers, no laws, no society, no conventions. The study about them in some detail deserves to be dealt further.

Now at this time I want to comment on the special relationship that  Diogenes had with  the most powerful person in the moment, Alexander, called the Great, Μέγας Αλέξανδρος on Greek. That long and strange relationship produced some of the most famous anecdotes in antiquity and since then repeated infinitely.

Diogenes was a kind of anarchist, because he does not admit another power than his own on himself and was also a libertarian because the freedom was for him the greatest value. According to Diogenes Laertius in his "Life and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers" in Book VI, 69:

Being asked what was the most beautiful thing in the world, he replied: “Freedom of speech• (Translation by R.D. Hicks, M.A)

He stress  his yearning for freedom in VI,71;

and asserting that the manner of life he lived was the same as that of Heracles when he preferred liberty to everything. (Translation by R.D. Hicks, M.A.) 

Diogenes,  like jesters who have often accompanied and served as a counterpoint to absolutist and tyrannical character, is allowed to tell the great Alexander what no mortal would dare say; and Alexander permits him all that he  would not allow anyone  who should contradict him, (Callisthenes,nephew of Aristotle,  Macedonian expedition partner, had worse treatment).

And he let him so much  that according with that  Diogenes Laertius recounts in Book VI, 32

Alexander is reported to have said, “Had I not been Alexander, I should have liked to be Diogenes” (Translation by R.D. Hicks, M.A)

Diogenes represents irreverence, rebelliousness, impertinence, insolence to power. Alexander  is the power that comes from the gods, according to many theorists (actually all power is or claims to be divine); further, Alexander himself is a god or at least a demigod before whom his subjects have to kneel waiting for his kiss of recognition. See  http://www.antiquitatem.com/en/proskynesis-bow-monarchy-persians

I will relate some anecdotes that marked his free spirit and self-possessed.

Diogene Laertius, book VI, 45

When  some one was extolling the good fortune of Callisthenes san saying what splendour he shared in the suite of Alexander, “Not so,” said Diogenes, “but rather ill fortune; for he breakfasts and dines when Alexander think fit.”  (Translation by R.D. Hicks, M.A)

Interestingly this intimate of Alexander, Callisthenes, nephew of his teacher Aristotle, was then caged to death accused of attempted of one of the several sedition  that the powerful Alexander  suffered.

Epictetus tells us in his Discourses III, 22,92 how Alexander, taking advantage Diogenes was half asleep, cited the verse 24 of song II of the Iliad, and Diogenes, really half asleep, he dared to complete it to Alexander.

Epictetus, Discourses, III, 22,92:

On another occasion in reply to Alexander, who stood by him when he was sleeping, and quoted Homer's line (Iliad, II. 24)
A man a councillor should not sleep all night,
he answered, when he was half asleep,
The people's guardian and so full of cares. (Translated by George Long. 1877)

And another quote full of irony of the same Diogenes Laertius, Book VI, 68:

When Alexander stood opposite him and asked.”Are you not afraid of me?” “Whay, what are you?” said he, “a good thing or a bad?” Upon Alexander replying “A good thing”. “Who the”, said Diogenes, “is afraid of the good?”  (Translation by R.D. Hicks, M.A)

The most famous anecdote, that also served to underline the importance of Diogenes, is the encounter between Diogenes and Alexander, who is once again the topic of the meeting between the king and the wise, between the intellectual and the ruler.

Diogenes Laertius tells us it and Cicero and Plutarch too, whose texts I will reproduce; and Arrianus in his Anabasis of Alexander VII, 2,1-2 and Valerius Maximus in Memorabile Deeds and Sayings, IV.3. ext.4 and St. John Chrysostom in Babilas against Julian and Gentiles, 8 and Pseudo-Eudocia (wife of Emperor Theodosius II in the V century), Violarium,332.24 to 241.3). The story was actually commonplace in antiquity.

Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers: VI, 38:

When he was sunning himself in the Craneum, Alexander came and stood over him and said, Ask of me any boon you like.” To which he replied, “Stand out of my light.”. (Translation by R.D. Hicks, M.A)

Note : The “Craneum” l was a gym in Corinth,where Diogenes taught their teachings.

Cicero, Tusculans Disputations, V,32 (92):

But Diogenes took a greater liberty, like a Cynic, when Alexander asked him if he wanted anything: “Jus at present.” Said he, “I wish that you would stand a Little aout of the line between me and the sun,” for Alexander was hindering him from sunning himself. And indeed this very man used to maintain how much he surpassed the Persian king,in his manner of life and fortune; for that he himself  was in want of nothing, while the other never had enough; aqnd that he had no inclination for those pleasures of which the other could never get enough to satisfy himself: and that the other could never obtain his. (Translations by C.D. Yonge, B.A. London 1872)

At vero Diogenes liberius, ut Cynicus, Alexandro roganti ut diceret, si quid opus esset: ‘Nunc quidem paullulum, inquit, a sole. Officerat videlicet apricanti. Et hic quidem disputare solebat quanto regem Persarum vita fortunaque superaret: sibi nihil deesse, illi nihil satis umquam fore: se eius voluptates non desiderare, quibus numquam stiari ille posset, suas eum conseui nullo modo posse.

Plutarch, in an interesting text in which he highlights the servile attitude of many philosophers, that is, the intellectuals of the time, compared to that of Diogenes, the insolent, the libertarian, the master of his own life, tells us in Life of Alexander , XIV:

And now a general assembly of the Greeks was held at the Isthmus,  where a vote was passed to make an expedition against Persia with Alexander, and he was proclaimed their leader. Thereupon many statesmen and philosophers came to him with their congratulations, and he expected that Diogenes of Sinope also, who was tarrying in Corinth, would do likewise.

But since that philosopher took not the slightest notice of Alexander, and continued to enjoy his leisure in the suburb Craneion, Alexander went in person to see him; and he found him lying in the sun. Diogenes raised himself up a little when he saw so many persons coming towards him, and fixed his eyes upon Alexander. And when that monarch addressed him with greetings, and asked if he wanted anything, ‘Yes,’ said Diogenes, ‘stand a little out of my sun.’ It is said that Alexander was so struck by this, and admired so much the haughtiness and grandeur of the man who had nothing but scorn for him, that he said to his followers, who were laughing and jesting about the philosopher as they went away, ‘But verily, if I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.’ (Translation by Bernadotte Perrin. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1919)

We may ask  if the story was real. Probably, like many others that have been told from  Diogenes, they are not real but invented. It is rather unlikely that the meeting, if there was, there is no historical basis for affirming, it occurs according these terms, but it does not diminish its ability to settle fame and define proposals for social life that  the philosopher made.

This story became a topos, a commonplace in ancient literature, often cited. As I said above, it is an example of the classic theme of the meeting of the king and the wise, the intellectual and the powerful. In fact in the life of Alexander,  a similar meeting with the gymnosophists of Hindus (the word means “naked sophists”) occurs;  such as Plutarch says in Alexander LXIV they are asked about a number of issues because they  are reputed to be very sharp in their responses. Certainly they respond with wit and skill and we can  say in current slang that they don’t want to know anything from the mighty Alexander because they need nothing from him.

Alexander became a myth in antiquity and he continued well into the Middle Ages and even today his name and his deeds have great success.

We have the proof of how some anecdotes were awarded to him in his relationship with Diogenes analyzing another example that many books and hundreds of articles now repeated in the network (www). They say that also the told  meeting, there was another little later:

On another occasion, Alexander surprised Diogenes seeing a lot of stacked bones. Alexander asked: What are you looking for?  Diogenes replied: "I seek the bones of your father, but I can not find them because I do not see the difference between the bones of your father and they of my slave."

In most cases the appointment appears without any source, even the most daring ascribe it to Plutarch, but this story does not appear, as far as I can ascertain, in the ancient world; it is a much more recently invented quote and awarded to the famous Diogenes  because this appointment does not detract from others that are  counted about him.

Only it appears something similar in Lucian of Samosata, in his Menippus dialogue, although the action  is situated in the underworld.

Although it may make a long digression, I offer the text of Lucian, always interesting and current,  as all works of satirical Lucian of Samosata; in this case he uses the analogy of  the “the Great Theater of the World”; ; we can remember the end of August, when he asked if he has played well the farce of life ? See http://www.antiquitatem.com/en/death-of-augustus-the-stage-of-the-life.

Lucian, Menippus or the descent into Hade, 15 et ff.

After making our way past these people also, we entered the Acherusian Plain, where we found the demigods and the fair women and the whole crowd of the dead, living by nations and by clans, some of them ancient and mouldy, and, as Homer says, "impalpable," while others were still well preserved and substantial, particularly the Egyptians, thanks to the durability of their embalming process. It was not at all easy, though, to tell them apart, for all, without exception, become precisely alike when their bones are bare. However, with some difficulty and by dint of long study we made them out. But they were lying one atop of another, ill-defined, unidentified, retaining no longer any trace of earthly beauty. So, with many skeletons lying together, all alike staring horridly and vacuously and baring
their teeth, I questioned myself how I could distinguish Thersites from handsome Nireus, or the mendicant Irus from the King of the Phaeacians, or the cook Pyrrhias from Agamemnon ; for none of their former means of identification abode with them, but their bones were all alike, undefined, unlabelled, and unable ever again to be distinguished by anyone.

So as I looked at them it seemed to me that human life is like a long pageant, and that all its trappings are supplied and distributed by Fortune, who arrays the participants in various costumes of many colours. Taking one person, it may be, she attires him royally, placing a tiara upon his head, giving him body-guards, and encircling his brow with the diadem ; but upon another she puts the costume of a slave. Again, she makes up one person so that he is handsome, but causes another to be ugly and ridiculous. I suppose that the show must
needs be diversified. And often, in the very middle of the pageant, she exchanges the costumes of several players ; instead of allowing them to finish the pageant in the parts that had been assigned to them, she re-apparels them, forcing Croesus to assume the dress of a slave and a captive, and shifting Maeandrius, who formerly paraded among the servants, into the imperial habit of Polycrates. For a brief space she lets them use their costumes, but when the time of the pageant is over, each gives back the properties and lays off the costume along with his body, becoming what he was before his birth, no different from his neighbour. Some, however, are so ungrateful that when Fortune appears to them and asks her trappings back, they are vexed and indignant, as if they were being robbed of their own property, instead of giving back what they had borrowed for a little time.

I suppose you have often seen these stage-folk who act in tragedies, and according to the demands of the plays become at one moment Creons, and again Priams or Agamemnons ; the very one, it may be, who a short time ago assumed with great dignity the part of Cecrops or of Erectheus soon appears as a servant at the bidding of the poet. And when at length the play comes to an end, each of them strips off his gold-bespangled robe, lays aside his mask, steps out of his buskins, and goes about in poverty and humility, no longer styled Agamemnon, son of Atreus, or Creon, son of Menoeceus, but Polus, son of Charicles, of Sunium, or Satyrus, son of Theogiton, of Marathon.  That is what human affairs are like, it seemed to me as I looked. (Translation by A. M. Harmon) 

Well, the story served later Dio Chrysostom to recreate the meeting, satirize the power and the powerful and present their ideas about the divine origin of power and legitimacy of its exercise. In a future article I will offer this interesting text.

Well, tradition, now supported by Diogenes Laertius also wanted to note another meeting, the final encounter between Alexander and Diogenes: both died on the same day of the year 323 BC, Alexander at age 33 in Babylon, result of the excesses, living on the edge of ambitious military and probably of malaria in those lands; Diogenes died at Corinth at 86 years of life more in keeping with the animal nature of man. But that is impossible.

Diogenes Laertius,  VI, 76-79

Diogenes is said to have been nearly ninety years old when he died. Regarding his death there are several different accounts. One is that he was seized with colic after eating an octopus raw and so met his end. Another is that he died voluntarily by holding his breath. This account was followed by Cercidas of Megalopolis (or of Crete), who in his meliambics writes thus :

Not so he who aforetime was a citizen of Sinope,

That famous one who carried a staff, doubled his cloak,

     and lived in the open air.

But he soared aloft with his lip tightly pressed against

     his teeth

And holding his breath withal. For in truth he was rightly
     named

Diogenes, a true-born son of Zeus, a hound of heaven.

Another version is that, while trying to divide an octopus amongst the dogs, he was so severely bitten on the sinew of the foot that it caused his death.His friends, however, according to Antisthenes in his Successions of Philosophers, conjectured that it was due to the retention of his breath. For he happened to be living in the Craneum, the gymnasium in front of Corinth. When his friends came according to custom and found him wrapped up in his cloak, they thought that he must be asleep, although he was by no means of a drowsy or somnolent habit.
They therefore drew aside his cloak and found that he was dead. This they supposed to have been his deliberate act in order to escape thenceforward from life.

Hence, it is said, arose a quarrel among his disciples as to who should bury him : nay, they even came to blows ; but, when their fathers and men of influence arrived, under their direction he was buried beside the gate leading to the Isthmus. Over his grave they set up a pillar and a dog in Parian marble upon it. Subsequently his fellow-citizens honoured him with bronze statues, on which these verses were inscribed :

   Time makes even bronze grow old : but thy glory,
   Diogenes, all eternity will never destroy. Since thou alone
   didst point out to mortals the lesson of self-sufficingness       
   and the easiest path of life.

We too have written on him in the proceleusmatic metre :

    A.Diogenes, come tell me what fate took you to the world
below ?

    D. A dog's savage tooth.

But some say that when dying he left instructions that they should throw him out unburied, that every wild beast might feed on him, or thrust him into a ditch and sprinkle a little dust over him. But according to others his instructions were that they should throw him into the Ilissus, in order that he might be useful to his brethren.

Demetrius in his work “On Men of the Same Name” asserts that on the same day on which Alexander died in Babylon Diogenes died in Corinth. He was an old man in the 113th Olympiad.

If as Laertius tells us, he died because he ate  a raw octopus that his stomach could not digest, he died of his rejection until the end of civilized life and their desire to live  naturally and animalistically as possible: what greater rejection of civilization may be than to renounce to the civilizing fire, stole by Prometheus  from the gods to men, so that they, among other things, could cook food and not must  to eat only raw as other animals?

The post Intellectuals and power (I): Diogenes the Cynic (versus) against Alexander the Great appeared first on History of Greece and Rome.

The History teaches us how in this encounter between strength and intelligence, on intellectual debate morally always the intelligence overcomes, but in practice the force is always imposed. To the sage, the intellectual, there are  three options: to bend slavishly to power (it is done by  the most),  to critic openly  the power (it is done by a few) and to go away prudently frompower (I do not dare to venture a proportion, but they are not few).

A quote from Stobaeus referring an anecdote of Antisthenes perfectly describes this cynical attitude. Stobaeus  tells us that when Antisthenes was asked how it is necessary to be involved in public affairs and in the affairs of the city, he responded:

Antisthenes, asked how one should approximate to the political affairs, he said as  to the fire, nor to close for  not to burn nor too far away for not to freeze. (Stobaeus, Florilegium, XLV, 28).

Stobaeus is a Greek author who writes in Greek, but his work was translated into Latin in Humanism. Thus in the Latin version by Conrad  Gessner  (1516-1565), edited by Christoph Froschoverus, 1544, in Switzerland, it is said in chapter XLIII, page 313 (in the edition of Thomas Gaisford it corresponds to Title XLV):

Antisthenes interrogatus quomodo ad rempublicam accedendum sit, respondit: ut ad ignem, neque nimis prope ne uraris, neque longius ne frigeas.

It seems, then, that the attitude against the  power belongs to the philosopher, because if they decide to live in the shadow of power, soon they will abandon their critical and free spirit. This is certainly the attitude of the "cynic philosopher".

Antisthenes, the founder of the school and teacher of Diogenes, according to Diogenes Laertius, wrote a book about Aspasia, the wife of Pericles and another one on Alcibiades, in which certainly he criticizes them their shortcomings.

It is confirmed by Athenaeus, in his "Deipnosophistae". Speaking about slanderous character of philosophers, Antisthenes says, criticizing the immoral life of Alcibiades, in V, 220 CDE:

Antisthenes, V, 63:

But Antisthnes, in the second of his treatises called Cyrus, abusing Alcibiades, says that he is a breaker of the laws, both with respect to women and with respect to every other part of his conduct in life; for he says that he had intrigued* with a mother, and daughter, and sister, after the fashion of the Persians.

*Note: This is a translation of the time itself that prevents sexual connotation of the original Greek; it actually says "lie down" "go to bed with"

And later, in the same appointment, referring to Pericles

… and his Aspasia attacks Xantthippus and Paralus, the sons of Pericles. For, as for one of them,he says that he is a companion of Archestratus, who is no better than a frequenter of houses of the worst possible fame; and the other he calls an acquaintance and intimate friend of Euphemus, who abuse every one he met with vulgar and ill-mannered abuse.

And to confirm this slanderer character of the philosophers, Athenaeus continues in the same text saying about Antisthenes:

And nicknaming Plato Satho, in a witless and vulgar manner, he published a dialogue against him, to which he gave the same name as its title. For these men believe that there is no such thing as an honest counsellor, or a conscientious general, or a respectable sophist, or a poet worth listening to, or a reasonable people: but Socrates…(Translated by C.C. Yonge, B.A. London: Henry G.Bohn. MDCCCLIV)

Note: To understand the vileness in the change of the name Plato it is necessary to know that the Greek name Sathon, with that  the nurse used to call to children,  derives from Sathe, one of the terms for the penis.

So now the first of the cynics was critical of the powerful of his time, and marked the way forward for the rest of the cynics. Diogenes far surpassed the teacher in acrimony with the contempt to powerful.

Antístenes preferred the executioner who kills the criminal than tyrant  who kills innocent, according to Stobaeus, who says in Florilegium, M.49.47 on Gaisfer edition, pag. 359:

Antisthenes, the philosopher, preferred in mercy the executioners than tyrants; to a person who asked him why he said that, he replied: because the executioner kills unrighteous men, but the tyrant also kills innocent.

In  Latin version, it corresponds to Title XLVII, entitled De tyrannidis uituperio, and it says on page  343 of this translation:

Antithenes philosophus carnifices tyrannis in pietate praeferebat, cuius causam interroganti cuidam respondit: a carnifice quidem homines iniusti interimuntur; a tyranno autem etiam insontes.

Antisthenes, harshly criticizing the insatiable craving for riches, said as it  was quoted by Stobaeus,  t. X, 12, (Edit. Thomas Gaisford., P. 294;quoted in turn by Chappuis, Antisthenes, page, 98.)

Whoever loves money can not be a good person, not as king or in private life.

In the cited Latin translation it is on Tit. VIII, and it says:

Avarus nemo bonus, neque rex, neque liber esse potest

It is the same attitude that Diogenes keeps, as Diogenes Laertius says in VI, 43

Dyonysius the Stoic says that after Chaeronea he was seized and dragged off to Philip, and being asked who he was, replied,”A spy upon your insatiable greed”. For this he was admired and set free. (Translation by R.D. Hicks, M.A. London: William Heinemann.MCMXXV. The Loeb Classical Library)

Antístenes despises those who impose their delirium to others and limit the freedom of individuals.

This rebellious attitude is revealed in the story cited of the meetings between Diogenes and Alexander already mentioned.

Incidentally, Alexander had Aristotle as master and teacher; he carried a copy of Homer's Iliad and he respected and not destroyed in Thebas the Pindar's house in recognition of his literary values;  but that did not stop him to act with great cruelty often .

The different attitude of Diogenes and Plato to the powerful is perfectly drawn in this story that has Diogenes Laertius in VI, 58:

Some authors affirm that the following also belongs to him: that Plato saw him washing lettuces, came up to him and quietly said to him,”Had you paid court to Dionysius, you wouldn’t  now be washing lettuces,” and that he with euqal calmness made answer, “if you had washed lettuces, you wouldn’t have paid court to Dionysius”. Translation by R.D. Hicks, M.A.)

Another anecdote shows how unimpressed Diogenes was by Alexander and his actions, works at last, of  a "miserable" and graceless human; Laertius tells us in VI, 44:

Alexander having on one occasion sent a letter to Antipater at Athens by a certain Athlios, Diogenes, who was present, said: “Graceless on of graceless sire to graceless wight by graceless squire.

Note: the Greek word Athlios means “graceless”.

Similarly Diogenes rejected the request to visit him that Craterus, general of Alexander the Great and one of his heirs at his death, did to him. Laertius tells us in VI, 57:

When Craterus wanted him to come and visit him, “No”, he replied, “I would rather live on a few grains of salt at Athens than enjoy sumptuous fare at Craterus’s table.”

This same Diogenes, as Laertius account  in VI, 50, when a tyrant asked him what bronze was best for a statue, replied:

On being asked by a tyrant what bronze is best for a statue, he replied, “That of which Harmodius and Aristogiton were moulded.”

Note: Harmodius and Aristogeiton, dead in 514 BC, were the ones who ended the tyrant Hipparchus of Athens and so they are known as the Tyrannicides. They were regarded as heroes and restorers of liberty. Therefore  a statue, built by Antenor, was erected  to them.

Note: tyrannicide, from the Greek τύραννος / tyrannos, "tyrant" and -cido form Latin caedere,  "kill"

Diogenes also loudly told  the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse, dismissed and reduced to the status of ordinary citizen:

Plutarch, Moralia,783D

And at a later time, at Corinth, when Diogenes saw the son of Dionysius no longer a tyrant but a private citizen, he very aptly said, "How little you deserve your present fate, Dionysius! For you ought not to be living here with us in freedom and without fear, but you should pass your life to old age over yonder walled up in the royal palace, as your father did."  (Translated by Harold North Fowler. Loeb Classical Library 321. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936.

There is another  anecdote of Diogenes that seems to anticipate one of our current ills. The story tells that one day he saw on the streets of Athens  a thief who had stolen a vase property of treasure and was arrested by two guards. Diogenes said, according to Diogenes Laertius, Life of Diogenes, VI, 45

Once he saw the officials of a templeleading away someone one who had stolen a bowl belonging to the treasurers, and said, “The great thieves are leading away the little thief.”

The two guards are naturally representatives of institutionalized power. The Justice not only was not and is not the same for everyone, but the pursuit of petty criminal  seems to cover the permissiveness of major economic crimes. We are very frequently seeing  the impunity of those who sink large banking firms to be rescued or squander the public money.

When on another occasion, Diogenes, asked what are the most ferocious animals, said, (according to Antonius and Maximus, in De  lucri cupiditate, 226.:

"In the mountains bears and lions; officials in cities and sycophants. "

Diogenes interrogatus, quaenam essent ferae pessimae, dixit: In montibus ursi et leones,in civitatibus vero publicani et sycophantae

Note: the sycophants are the whistleblowers.

Laertius  accounts it incomprehensibly because incomplete, in VI, 51. It should be know to understand some of the difficulties that the transmission of ancient texts has:
….
Being asked what creature’s bite is the worst, he said,”Of those that are wild a sycophant’s; ot those that are tame a flatterer’s.”

Also other cynics, as Crates, one of the most famous disciples of the "Dog", as Laertius  says (VI, 85), who  was  a couple with one of the few Greek women of whom we  know her name and deeds, Hipparchia, cynic philosopher also madly in love with him, also he despises the enormous power of Alexander who destroyed and built so many cities. Diogenes Laertius tells us in VI, 93:

When Alexander inquired whether he would like his native city to be rebuilt, his answer was, Whay should it be? Perhaps another Alexander will destroy it again.”

The task of the philosopher is the resistance, insurrection, rebellion, insubordination.

In the previous article he commented, as I said, the disrespectful attitude and answer of the cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope. The philosophers "dogs", the Cynics, are in Antiquity  the prototype of thinker antisystem, anarchic and libertarian and therefore very critical to  the government.

Diogenes is the most famous representative of this line of thought or school that fails to translate their ideas into works of systematic thought, but it is true that there are very few traces that remain of what they wrote.

Well, in addition to Diogenes, there are many other examples of intellectuals who criticize the powerful and thus power, suffering the harsh consequences of the  punishment. Most of them were cynical but also there were stoic philosopher.

The  attitude of cynic philosophers is direct confrontation "with loud voices" to  the powerful and citizens.

The Stoics are more cautious. It may reflect this attitude a fragment of the Letter 103 of Seneca to Lucilius in that he are advises  to be wary of men, because they can do much harm to other men, and to take refuge in philosophy; but he does not hold  the office of philosophy arrogantly.

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 103, 4:

Make your retreat however as soon as possible into the courts of Philosophy. She will protect you in her bosom. In her sanctuary you will be safe at least much safer than at present. Men jostle one another, only when walking together and as to philosophy, pride not yourself thereon : many have suffered from their insolent and disdainful behaviour in this respect. Let it expel your own vices, and not upbraid those of other men. Nor be singularly averse to the manners and fashions of the public (d) ; nor so act as to seem to condemn every thing but what comes from yourself. A man may be wife without such pomp and shew as to raise jealousy and envy in others. (Published 1786)

Quantum potes autem, in philosophiam recede: illa te sinu 1 suo proteget, in huius sacrario eris aut tutus aut tutior. Non arietant inter se nisi in eadem ambulantes via. 2 Ipsam autem philosophiam non debebis iactare; multis fuit periculi causa insolenter tractata et contumaciter.
[5] Tibi vitia detrahat, non aliis exprobret. Non abhorreat a publicis moribus nec hoc agat, ut quicquid non facit, damnare videatur. Licet sapere sine pompa, sine invidia. Vale.

Yet one of the social functions of philosophy is to be critical of the power and the powerful. Perhaps it maybe not with the passion with which Crates expressed, but not with passivity that makes philosophy today not only not a norm of life and behavior, but it  is down to pure theory and bookish study.

Crates said in Diogenes Laertius, VI, 92:

He used to say that we should study philosophy to the point of seeing in generals nothing but donkey-drivers. (Translated by Robert Drew Hicks)

This suggests that we must consider the role of philosophy today …

But, today philosophy plays a role in society? Not too long ago it was confined in school, reduced to the study of philosophy books unrelated to the life of the street? As Nietzsche said in Untimely Meditations, 3rd, 2, (Schopenhauer as Educator):

The only method of criticising a philosophy that is possible and proves anything at all—namely to see whether one can live by it—has never been taught at the universities; only the criticism of words, and again words, is taught there. (translated by Adrian Collins)

Nietzsche,Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen (Schopenhauer als Erzieher)

Die einzige Kritik einer Philosophie, die möglich ist und die auch etwas beweist, nämlich zu versuchen, ob man nach ihr leben könne, ist nie auf Universitäten gelehrt worden: sondern immer die Kritik der Worte über Worte.

Moreover, we can even ask ourselves: Do they have a role in our society today "Cynic philosophers"? Are they not as necessary now as 2000 years ago?

The post Intellectuals against the power (II) appeared first on History of Greece and Rome.

The Stoic and moralist philosopher Seneca, (4 BC -65 d C), criticizes in a letter to his friend Lucilius the scandalous spending that some citizens do in their feasts and the sophistication of a kitchen that transforms food until beyond recognition.

This treatment seems me similar to the famous present food dishes of deconstructed cooking where things are not what they seem.

Seneca also criticizes the combination of dishes and foods and flavors in striking conflicting jumble and complexity which can not cause but more rare and each day  more complex diseases.

It resembles me also the continuous information and diet plans, conflicting with each other, whit which  we are daily beaten by eager of profit companies: one day the qualities of a particular food are praised and  later another day they are reviled ; some are directly demonized and banned, even though man has consumed them since his origins.

It is striking in this respect the recent recommendation  to don’t consume or to limit the intake of meat prepared by man. Curiously, there is a movement of protest what they call the "Paleolithic diet" consisting of eating raw meat, rejecting one of the greatest inventions of man, the fire, and knowing that our Paleolithic ancestors eat the carrion or meat of dead animals for a long time,  and the don’t eat hunted meat.

Anyway, once again I find that what seemed very modern, it is as old at least than  the Greco-Roman world.

Otherwise it should been known that the issue of "feeding" is incidental in  the letter, which purports to show his friend the failure of theoretical philosophy. So I advise you, for those who want it, a complete reading of the letter number 95.

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 95, 14 et seq.
….
Undoubtedly, as you say, that ancient wisdom was in the beginning rude and Angle, no less than other arts, that in process of time grew more refined and polished. But there was no need of such choice remedies as are now presented : wickedness was not grown' to such a height, nor had it spread so wide: simple remedies were applied to simple vices. But now there is a necessity for stronger battlements, and more laboured fortifications, as the mischiefs that assault us are grown so much stronger and more powerful.

Physic formerly was nothing more than skill in the virtues of some few herbs whereby the flowing blood might be staunched, and wounds closed by degrees ; but now it is become an extensive study, and consists in a surprising multiplicity of prescriptions. No wonder it had so little to do in those antient times, when the bodies of men were hale and robust, and their diet plain and easy, uncorrupted by art and delicacies; which in after times began to be sought for, not in order to satisfy hunger, but to provoke it;  and a thousand high-seasoned sauces, were invented to raise an appetite; so that meats which before sustained, and proved wholesome nourishment to those who wanted them, serve now only to overload the full stomach. Hence proceed paleness, and trembling of the nerves relaxed by wine; and a more miserable: leanness, caused rather by crudities than hunger; hence such a tottering gait, and perpetual {tumbling, as if men were always drunk; hence the small vessels of the cuticle are filled with water, and the belly distended, being accustomed to be crammed with more than it can well; hold, hence the black jaundice; the wan countenance of such as are in a deep consumption; the crooked fingers from the stiffness of the joints; the unfeeling apoplexy, and the evershaking palsy. What need I mention the swimming of the head; the torment both of the eyes and ears, the acute pains of the raging brain; the passages of the body afflicted with ulcers ; besides numberless forts of fevers, some high and violent, others creeping on by flow degrees ; others seizing us with horror and great saking of the limbs; with a thousand other distempers, the just plagues of luxury and intemperance?

The antients were free from these dreadful evils ; who had not as yet debauched themselves with the most delicate viands; who were their own mailers, and their own servants : they harden’d their bodies with toil and useful labour; and when tired with running, or hunting, or
tilling the ground, they sate down to such a repast, as would not have been relished, had they not been hungry. There was no need therefore! in those days of shops full of drugs, nor of so many instruments, gallipots and boxes. Simple was their health, from a simple cause,
but variety of dishes introduced a variety of diseases (d). Only observe what a strange mixture of things, luxury,, having ravaged both the land and sea, hath provided for the swallow of one gormandizing throat. Things of such different qualities can never agree, in, or with the stomach : it is impossible they should digest, as one thing prevents another. No wonder then that uncertain and various diseases should arise from such discordant meats ; and that humours, collected from such opposite parts of nature, and now conjoined in one, should redound as they do; for as we live by no rule, we sicken by none.

The greatest physician, and founder of the profession, observed, that women never shed their hair, nor were ever lame with the gout : but now are they both gouty and bald. The nature of women however is not changed, but the manner of life : for by taking the fame liberties with men, they have subjected themselves to the fame disorders; they keep as bad hours (e); they drink as deep; and challenge them as well in the use of oyl, as of strong wine ; they alike eat without an appetite; and are not ashamed of discharging an overloaded stomach by the mouth (f ) ; they likewife make their teeth chatter with ice, by way of cooling and refreshing the overheated liver ; nor in any lustful action will they suffer men to surpass them; may all the Gods and Goddesses confound them for their abominable practices! What wonder is it then that the greatest physician and most experienced naturalist, should be liable to a mistake, since we now see women afflicted both with the gout and baldness ? They have lost the privilege of their sex by their vices, and, having thrown aside the woman, subjected themselves to the diseases of debauchees.

The antient physicians knew not to prescribe frequent eating, or to drench the flagging veins with wine; they knew not the art of cupping or scarifying or to ease a chronic disorder by bathing or sweating; they knew not, by binding the legs and arms to recall the vital heat from the central parts to the extreme. There was no need of consultations, or to hunt after various kinds of remedies, when the dangers of their patients were few, and in a narrow compass. But now, alas ! to what a degree are disorders multiplied ? Such is the interest we pay for the irrational and inordinate pleasures that we indulge ourselves in !

But do you wonder that diseases multiply ? Count the cooks. All study is given over; the professors of the liberal arts fit in some lonely corner without an audience; the schools of rhetoric and philosophy are quite deserted; while the taverns and cook-shops are full : what a crowd of young fellows surround the hearth of some spendthrift ? I pass by the troops of poor boys, natives or foreign, distinguished by their nation, and complexions, and ranged according to their size, their age, and even their hair, those who have lank and straight locks not being admitted among the curled: I omit likewise the crew of bakers and confectioners, and other serving men whose business it is, at a sign given (g), to bring in the supper. Good gods! what a number of men does one belly employ !

But can you think those mushrooms (a tasteful poyson) do not secretly and gradually operate, though no bad effect is immediately perceived from them ? Do you think that the summer-ice does not chill, and by degrees make the liver callous ? or that those oysters, a molt
inert kind of flesh in itself, being fattened with mud, engender not viscous and muddy humours ? or that soy (A), or the pickle made of the gravy of unwholesome fish, does not burn up the entrails with its feline and poysonous particles ? or that those strong soups which are swallowed down hot from the fire, can without doing any prejudice, be extinguished in die bowels ? How filthy and pestilent are their belches ! How do they loth themselves, while disgorging their last surfeit ! Know, that such eatables as the luxurious are now fond of, may putrefy, but digest not.

I remember to have heard of a famous dish (i), into which a lickerish glutton, hastening his own destruction, was wont to gather all the dainties that were used to be served up at the tables of great men ; all kinds of shell-fish, cockels, muscles, and oysters with their beards cut off, are intermixed with sea-urchins (k)„ and poulets crimped and boned; no one can now eat of a single dish (l), they muff all be mingled together, and such an hotch-potch prepared for supper, as we may suppose made in the belly after a full meal. For my part, I expect soon that the visuals will be served up already chewed: for there is but little difference in having things so mangled and ,mashed together, and having a cook perform the office of our teeth.

It is thought tedious to indulge the taste with one thing after another ; all things must be set on together and disguised with one flavour: it would be too much trouble to reach out the hand for any particular thing; every thing must come on at once: the garnishing of many dishes must unite, and be blended together; and let those, who lay that all this is by way of grandeur and ostentation, know, that the fame excesses are committed not only in public but in private. Tho' a man sups alone, upon one mess of soup, it is compounded of various ingredients, that used to serve for so many dishes; but now there must be no difference between oysters and muscles ; and sea-crabs must be mixed, and cooked up with mullets; so that the light of it, if thrown up again, could not be more confused, (as I before observed). Now,as these viands are thus mixed and confounded, no single disorder can be supposed to arise therefrom, but several, unaccountable, different, and multiplied diseases, against which physic hath begun to arm herself, with many remedies founded on observations and experiments.

The fame I say of philosophy-it was once of a more simple nature, among those whole fins were not so enormous, but curable with flight and easy remedies. Against such a degeneracy and corruption of manners as now reigns, every thing is to be tried; and I wish that even so,
this dreadful malady may be overcome.

If the criticisms were insufficient  to the waste,  shortly after he adds  another element that also reminds us  the exorbitant price currently paid for a good fish for bluefin tuna for example in Japan, or for the first salmon of an Asturian river, when the famous restaurants in the area compete for it.

Seneca says in the same letter, paragraphs 41 et seq .:

What can be more scandalous than to spend at one supper a knight’s yearly revenue (2000ls.Sterling!) what more worthy censorial reprehension, than for a man thus to treat, or, in the language of a debauched, joyously indulge himself ? Yet there have been men,
otherwise of a frugal temper, who, on some extraordinary occasion, have made an entertainment which cost 30000 sesterces. Now if such a sum was expended merely by way of feasting and gluttony, nothing could be more scandalous ; but if it was in honour of some great personage, and a noble assembly, it may well escape censure ; for then it it is not extravagant luxury, but a grand and solemn treat. 

Tiberius Caesar ordered that a mullet of an extraordinary size, (why should I not mention the weight, to make gluttons gape ? it weighed four pounds and an half,) which was sent him for a present, to be carried into the market, and sold, saying, I should be much mistaken , my friends,if either Appius or P. Octavius buy not this fish . The thing sell out beyond his expectation : these very two men bid upon one another for it: Octavius got it, and not only the fish, but great glory among his companions, for having bought a fish for 5ooo sesterces, which Caesar had sold, and Apicius could not buy : now it was shameful in Octavius to buy it at such a price; but not in the person who bought it for a present to Tiberius, whatever it cost him; though I do not think it altogether excusable; it was vanity that made him admire a thing which he thought worthy Caesar. (Published 1786. Public Domain Mark 1.0 https://archive.org/details/SenecaLetters.)

Fuit sine dubio, ut dicitis, vetus illa sapientia cum maxime nascens rudis non minus quam ceterae artes, quarum in processu subtilitas crevit. Sed ne opus quidem adhuc erat remediis diligentibus. Nondum in tantum nequitia surrexerat nec tam late se sparserat. Poterant vi tus simplicibus obstare remedia simplicia; nunc necesse est tanto operosiora esse munimenta, quanto vehementiora sunt, quibus petimur.
Medicina quondam paucarum fuit scientia herbarum, quibus sisteretur fluens sanguis, vulnera coirent; paulatim deinde in hanc pervenit tam multiplicem varietatem. Nec est mirum tunc illam minus negotii habuisse firmis adhuc solidisque corporibus et facili cibo nec per artem voluptatemque corrupto, qui postquam coepit non ad tollendam, sed ad inritandam famem quaeri et inventae sunt mille conditurae, quibus aviditas excitaretur, quae desiderantibus ali menta erant, onera sunt plenis.
Inde pallor et nervorum vino madentium tremor et miserabilior ex cruditatibus quam ex fame macies. Inde incerti  labantium  pedes et semper qualis in ipsa ebrietate titubatio. Inde in totam cutem umor admissus distentusque venter, dum male adsuescit plus capere quam poterat. Inde suffusio luridae bilis et decolor vultus tabesque in se putrescentium et retorridi digiti articulis obrigescentibus nervorumque sine sensu iacentium torpor aut palpitatio  sine intermissione vibrantium.
Quid capitis vertigines dicam ? Quid oculorum auriumque tormenta et cerebri exaestuantis verminationes et omnia, per quae exoneramur, internis ulceribus adfecta ? Innumerabilia praeterea febrium genera, aliarum impetu saevientium, aliarum tenui peste repentium, aliarum eum horrore et multa membrorum quassatione venientium ?
Quid alios referam innumerabiles morbos, supplicia luxuriae ?
Immunes erant ab istis malis, qui nondum se deliciis solverant, qui sibi imperabant, sibi ministrabant. Corpora opere ac vero labore durabant aut cursu defatigati aut venatu aut tellure  versanda.  excipiebat illos cibus, qui nisi esurientibus placere non posset. Itaque nihil opus erat tam magna medicorum supellectile nec tot ferramentis atque pyxidibus. Simplex erat ex causa simplici valitudo; multos morbos multa fericula fecerunt.
Vide, quantum rerum per unam gulam transiturarum permisceat luxuria, terrarum marisque vastatrix. necesse est itaque inter se tam diversa dissideant et hausta male  male digerantur aliis alio nitentibus. Nec mirum, quod inconstans variusque ex discordi cibo morbus est et illa ex contrariis naturae partibus in eundem compulsa redundant. Inde tam multo  aegrotamus genere quam vivimus.
Maximus ille medicorum et huius scientiae conditor feminis nec capillos defluere dixit nec pedes laborare; atqui et capillis destituuntur et pedibus aegrae sunt. Non mutata feminarum natura, sed victa est; nam cum virorum licentiam aequaverint, corporum quoque virilium incommoda aequarunt.
Non minus pervigilant, non minus potant, et oleo et mero viros provocant; aeque invitis ingesta visceribus per os reddunt et vinum omne vomitu remetiuntur; aeque nivem rodunt, solacium stomachi aestuantis. Libidine vero ne maribus quidem cedunt, pati natae, di illas deaeque male perdant! Adeo perversum commentae genus inpudicitiae viros ineunt. Quid ergo mirandum est maximum medicorum ac naturae peritissimum in mendacio prendi, cum tot feminae podagricae calvaeque sint ? Beneficium sexus sui vitiis perdiderunt et, quia feminam exuerant, damnatae sunt morbis virilibus.
Antiqui medici nesciebant dare cibum saepius et  vino fulcire venas cadentes, nesciebant sanguinem mittere et diutinam aegrotationem balneo sudoribusque laxare, nesciebant crurum vinculo brachiorumque latentem vim et in medio sedentem ad extrema revocare. Non erat necesse circumspicere multa auxiliorum genera, eum essent periculorum paucissima.
Nunc vero quam longe processerunt mala valitudinis ! Has usuras voluptatium pendimus ultra modum fasque concupitarum. Innumerabiles esse morbos non miraberis: cocos numera. Cessat omne studium et liberalia professi sine ulla frequentia desertis angulis praesident. In rhetorum ac philosophorum scholis solitudo est; at quam celebres culinae sunt, quanta circa nepotum focos iuventus premitur !
Transeo puerorum infelicium greges, quos post transacta convivia aliae cubiculi contumeliae exspectant. Transeo agmina exoletorum per nationes coloresque discripta, ut eadem omnibus levitas sit, eadem primae mensura lanuginis, eadem species capillorum, ne quis, cui rectior est coma, crispulis misceatur. Transeo pistorum turbam, transeo ministratorum, per quos signo dato ad inferendam cenam discurritur. Di boni, quantum hominum unus venter exercet! Quid ? Tu illos boletos, voluntarium venenum, nihil occulti operis iudicas facere, etiam si praesentanei non fuerunt ?
Quid ? Tu illam aestivam nivem non putas callum iocineribus obducere ?  Quid ? Illa ostrea, inertissimam carnem caeno saginatam, nihil existimas limosae gravitatis inferre ? Quid ? Illud sociorum garum, pretiosam malorum piscium saniem, non credis urere salsa tabe praecordia ? Quid ? Illa purulenta et quae tantum non ex ipso igne in os transferuntur, iudicas sine noxa in ipsis visceribus extingui ? Quam foedi itaque pestilentesque ructus sunt, quantum fastidium sui exhalantibus crapulam veterem ! Scias putrescere sumpta, non concoqui.
Memini fuisse quondam in sermone nobilem patinam, in quam quicquid apud lautos solet diem ducere, properans in damnum suum popina congesserat; veneriae spondylique et ostrea eatenus circumcisa, qua eduntur, intervenientibus distinguebantur echinis. Totam dissecti structique  sine ullis ossibus mulli constraverant.
Piget esse iam singula; coguntur in unum sapores. In cena fit, quod fieri debebat  in ventre. Expecto iam, ut manducata ponantur. Quantulo autem hoc minus est, festas excerpere atque ossa et dentium opera cocum fungi ? " Gravest luxuriari per singula; omnia semel et in eundem saporem versa ponantur. Quare ego ad unam rem manum porrigam ? Plura veniant simul,  multorum ferculorum ornamenta coeant et cohaereant.
Sciant protinus hi, qui iactationem ex istis peti et gloriam aiebant, non ostendi ista, sed conscientiae dari. Pariter sint, quae disponi solent, uno iure perfusa. Nihil intersit: ostrea, echini, spondyli, mulli perturbati concoctique ponantur." Non esset confusior vomentium cibus.
Quomodo ista perplexa sunt, sic ex istis non singulares morbi nascuntur, sed inexplicabiles, diversi, multiformes, adversus quos et medicina armare se coepit multis generibus, multis observationibus.
Idem tibi de philosophia dico. Fuit aliquando simplicior inter minora peccantes et levi quoque cura remediabiles; adversus tantam morum eversionem omnia conanda sunt. Et utinam sic denique lues ista vindicetur !
……
Párr.. 41 y ss.
Quid est cena sumptuosa flagitiosius et equestrem censum consumente ? Quid tam dignum censoria nota, si quis, ut isti ganeones loquuntur, sibi hoc et genio suo praestet ? Et deciens  tamen sestertio aditiales cenae frugalissimis viris constiterunt. Eadem res, si gulae datur, turpis est; si honori, reprensionem effugit. Non enim luxuria, sed inpensa sollemnis est.
Mullum ingentis formae—quare autem non pondus adicio et aliquorum gulam inrito ? quattuor pondo et selibram fuisse aiebant—Tiberius Caesar missum sibi cum in macellum deferri et veniri iussisset: " amici," inquit, " omnia me fallunt, nisi istum mullum aut Apicius emerit aut P. Octavius." Ultra spem illi coniectura processit: liciti sunt, vicit Octavius et ingentem consecutus est inter suos gloriam, cum quinque sestertiis emisset piscem, quem Caesar vendiderat, ne Apicius quidem emerat. Numerare tantum Octavio fuit turpe, non illi,  qui emerat, ut Tiberio mitteret, quamquam illum quoque reprenderim; admiratus est rem, qua putavit Caesarem dignum.

The post For a healthy and balanced diet appeared first on History of Greece and Rome.

The young Alexander died at thirty-three, he became a demigod in life and then a myth, whose echoes reach the world today. His life, full of wonderful facts and also of other less glorious, is adorned with all kinds of references and used for all kinds of educational, moral or simple dilettantism purposes.

Diogenes Chrysostom is one of the authors who uses the echo of Alexander and the echo of the cynic philosopher Diogenes too to present his theories on power, whose best representative person may be Alexander.

I have already devoted an article to the meetings of Alexander with the cynic philosopher. See: http://www.antiquitatem.com/en/diogenes-alexander-intellectual-power

The text of Dio can be a bit long but it is worth reading it with a bit of calm and meditation: it is a more intriguing to see how the ideas, once and again instilled in our cultural unconscious, are many hundreds, several millennia old.

Dio Chrysostom (Δίων Χρυσόστομος)  is a Greek author of Roman imperial era, mixture of rhetoric and philosopher. If the name Dio is a hypocoristic, family, affectionate way of "Dios", Δίωs, genitive of Zeus; the nickname "Chrysostom", Χρυσόστομος, from Χρυσόσ, krisos,  gold, and στόμα, stoma, mouth, refers to his "ability to speak”.

He was born around the year 40 and consequently he lived in the second half of the first century and the first decades of the second century; he was born in Pursa, today Bursa, small town of modern Turkey. He had remarkable success during his lifetime  and later because, although many works of him are lost, also over eighty discourses  are preserved. He toured many places delighting the audience with his "speeches" or "lecturing" as we would say today. Pursued by the Emperor Domitian, who punished all those who opposed him in some way, then he was a friend and protected by Nerva and Trajan.

As philosopher, Dio kept turn an intermediate position or moralizing mixture of cynicism and stoicism. His position about the power was quite different from the cynical, which is very critical, if not outright opposed, to all authority. As Homer, whom he remembers, he thinks that the king or emperor is elected  by the divinity and he rules the world in his name. He is like a shepherd who cares for his sheep. Power is not a personal privilege but a burden and obligation that the ruler must to exercise in favor of the governed. The ruler is like a father benefactor of free subjects who must love and obey him. Naturally the king, elected by divinity must to be good, just and wise to perform his function.

It is quite clear how successfully these Stoic ideas bore fruit in ancient Antiquity of Roman emperors.  The Christian thought, that two centuries later was imposed politically throughout the Roman Empire, coincides exactly with them. This is the idea that catches force  in the Middle Ages and in some cases is come down to us: we can remember the legend that not so long ago illustrated the Spanish coins with the effigy of the chief dictator Francisco Franco "leader of Spain by the grace of God. " (Caudillo de España por la Gracia de Dios). The study of the influence of the writings and thought of  Dion in posterity is a subject of great interest.

I will make a comprehensive summary  of his Discourse IV about royalty, on which he reproduces the encounter between Diogenes and Alexander, writen about the year 100 and perhaps read at  Trajan himself. It is interesting to read completely this speech  and several other of the larger work of Dion.

Dion seems in this speech to demonstrate the superiority of the philosopher, or of the intellectual, against the king, but he  admitted  the existence of the monarchy or power as a political institution, in flagrant contradiction with the position of the Cynics like Diogenes. Indeed, the true king is the son of Zeus, as Homer said, but then the condition of the true king must to be ratified by the spiritual and moral qualities and not by force of military power of the arms and wide dominion. The ruler must reject the spirit of avarice, the spirit of the love of pleasure, and the spirit of ambition,

Perhaps the Discourse was delivered in front of Trajan in celebration of his birthday, September 18th  in the A.D. 103. Trajan according to Dio was graced with a good "daemon" or genius or good spirit which led her performance effectively.

Moreover, the reader will see in these fragments the condition of rhetoric and philosopher of the successful Dio.

Note: the following English texts are taken from the translation by J.W.Cohoon (Loeb Classical Library. Harvard University Press, 1932)

Dio Chrysostom begins his speech "about royalty IV " narrating the meeting of Alexander and Diogenes that we already know with less detail and rhetoric in the article cited above:

The Fourth Discourse on Kingship:

paragraphs 1-15:

They tell us that once upon a time Alexander when not over busy met Diogenes, who had an abundance of time on his hands. For the one was king of Macedonia and many other countries beside, while there was an exile from Sinope; and there are many who in speaking and writing of this encounter give no less admiration and credit to Alexander than to Diogenes because, although he was ruler over so many people and had greater power than any other man of his day, he did not disdain to converse with a poor man who had intelligence and the power of endurance. For all men without exception are naturally delighted when they see wisdom honoured by the greatest power and might; hence they not only relate the facts in such cases but add extravagant embellishments of their own; nay more, they strip their wise men of all else, such as wealth, honours, and physical strength, so that the high regard in which they are held may appear to be due to their intelligence alone. And so I should like on this occasion to tell what in all likelihood was the nature of their conversation, since it happens too that I have nothing else that demands my attention.
Now it should be explained that Alexander was by common report the most ambitious of men and the greatest lover of glory. He was anxious to leave his name the greatest among the Greeks and barbarians and longed to be honoured, not only — as one might put it — by mankind the world over, but, if it were at all possible, by the birds of the air and the beasts of the mountains. Moreover, he looked down upon all other men and thought that no one was a dangerous rival in this matter — neither the Persian king nor the Scythian nor the Indian nor any man or city among the Greeks.  For he perceived that they had all been well-nigh ruined in soul by luxury and idleness and were the slaves of money and pleasure. But as to Diogenes, when Alexander heard of the words which this man spoke and of the deeds which he did and how he bore his exile, though at times he despised the man for his poverty and shabbiness, quite naturally, as he himself was young and had been reared in royal luxury,  yet often he would admire and envy the man for his courage and endurance, and especially for his great reputation, because all the Greeks knew and admired him for what he was, and no one else could match him in point of distinction.  He himself needed his Macedonian phalanx, his Thessalian cavalry, Thracians, Paeonians, and many others if he was to go where he wished and get what he desired; but Diogenes went forth unattended in perfect safety by night as well as by day whithersoever he cared to go.  Again, he himself required huge sums of gold and silver to carry out any of his projects; and what is more, if he expected to keep the Macedonians and the other Greeks submissive, must time and again curry the favour of their rulers and the general populace by words gifts;  whereas Diogenes cajoled no men by flattery, but told everybody the truth and, even though he possessed not a single drachma, succeeded in doing as he pleased, failed in nothing he set before himself, was the only man who lived the life he considered the best and happiest, and would not have accepted Alexander's throne or the wealth of the Medes and Persians in exchange for his own poverty.

Therefore Alexander, being nettled to think that anyone living so easy and care-free a life was going to surpass himself and in addition should be no less famous, and thinking perhaps too that he would receive some benefit from an interview with the man, had long desired to behold him and converse with him;  and when he had come to Corinth and had received the Greek embassies and regulated the affairs of the allies as well, he told his attendants that he wished to have a little leisure and went off — I will not say to the court of Diogenes, for he had no court either great or small, nor house nor hearth of his own as the well-to-do have, but he made the cities his home and used to live there in the public buildings and in the shrines, which are dedicated to the gods, and took for his hearth-stone the wide world, which after all is man's common hearth and nourisher. On that day it happened that Diogenes was all alone in the Craneion, for he had no pupils at all nor any such crowd about him as the sophists and flue-players and choral masters have. So the king came up to him as he sat there and greeted him, whereat the other looked up at him with terrible glare like that of a lion and ordered him to step aside a little, for Diogenes happened to be warming himself in the sun. Now Alexander was at once delighted with the man's boldness and composure in not being awestruck in his presence. For it is somehow natural for the courageous to love the courageous, while cowards eye them with misgiving and hate them as enemies, but welcome the base and like them. And so to the one class truth and frankness are the most agreeable things in the world, to the other, flattery and deceit. The latter lend a willing ear to those who in their intercourse seek to please, the former, to those who have regard for the truth.

Then Diogenes is particularly insolent to the powerful, even calling him  with all irony "bastard"

Paragraphs 16 et seq.

Then after a brief pause Diogenes asked the king who he was and what object he had in coming to him. "Was it," he said, "to take some of my property?" "Why, have you any property?" replied the other; "do you own anything that you might share with one?" "Much indeed," he replied, "and very valuable, in which I do not at all feel sure that you will ever be able to have a share. Yet it is not glaives or cauldrons or mixing-bowls or couches and tables such as Darius is reported by some writers to possess in Persia that I happen to own."  "What," retorted the other, "do you not know Alexander the king?" "I hear many speak his name, to be sure," said he, "like so many jackdaws flitting about, but the man I know not, for I am not acquainted with his mind." "But now," came the answer, "you shall know his mind also, since I have come for the very purpose of letting you know me thoroughly and of seeing you."  "Well, it would be hard for you to see me," rejoined the other, "just as it is for men with weak eyes to see the light. But tell me this: are you the Alexander whom they call a bastard?" At this the king flushed and showed anger, but he controlled himself and regretted that he had deigned to enter into conversation with a man who was both rude and an impostor, as he thought.

Diogenes showed him that if he was the son of a god, as he appeared, he turns out to be
a "bastard", but divine bastard. Alexander was flattered.

Then follows a dialogue and considerations on good governance and the proper exercise of royalty:

Paragraphs 24  et seq.

Hereupon he put the following question to Diogenes. "How," said he, "could one be the best king?" At this the other, eyeing him sternly, answered, "But no one can be a bad king any more than he can be a bad good man; for the king is the best one among men, since he is most brave and righteous and humane, and cannot be overcome by any toil or by any appetite.  Or do you think a man is a charioteer if he cannot drive, or that one is a pilot if he is ignorant of steering, or is a physician if he knows not how to cure? It is impossible, nay, though all the Greeks and barbarians acclaim him as such and load him with many diadems and sceptres and tiaras like so many necklaces that are put on castaway children lest they fail of recognition. Therefore, just as one cannot pilot except after the manner of pilots, so no one can be a king except in a kingly way."

Then Alexander in alarm, lest after all he might be found ignorant of the science of kingship, said, ..

Diogenes then explains how there are two types of education, the divine and the human; not by to read  and to know too many stories, the man is wiser and more learned; the educated are truly "noble soul" educated by the gods. They  are not true educators the ignorant and charlatans sophists, who are as poorly trained dogs or as libidinous eunuchs.

Paragraphs 36  et seq.

On hearing this, Alexander wondered what his reason was for likening the sophist to a eunuch and asked him. "Because," came the reply, "the most wanton eunuchs, protesting their virility and their passion for women, lie with them and annoy them, and yet nothing comes of it, not even if they stay with them night and day.  So too in the schools the sophists you will find many growing old in their ignorance, wandering about in their discussions far more helplessly than Homer says Odysseus ever did upon the deep, and any one of them might sooner find his way to Hades as that hero did than become a good man by talking and listening.

Diogenes criticizes him whom  as Xerxes and Darius are not true shepherds of their people, but butchers who lead them to the slaughter; he warns Alexander not to play at being king like Darius.
Alexander in his ambition to dominate the Persian and the world, asks Diogenes about who is his  enemy and Diogenes replied in a very eloquent way:

Paragraphs 55  et seq.

"And what enemy have I still left," said he, "if I capture those peoples I have mentioned?" "The most difficult of all to conquer," he answered, "one who does not speak Persian or Median as Darius does, I presume, but Macedonian and Greek." At this Alexander was troubled and sore distressed for fear the other knew of someone in Macedonia or Greece who was preparing to make war on him,  and asked, "Who is this enemy of mine in Greece or Macedonia?" "Why, do you not know," said he, "you who think that you know more than anyone else?" "In that case will you please tell me?" he asked; "do not conceal it." "I have been trying to tell you for a long time, but you do not hear that you are yourself your own bitterest foe and adversary as long as you are bad and foolish. And this is the man of whom you are more ignorant than of any other person.  For no foolish and evil man knows himself; else Apollo would not have given as the first commandment, 'Know thyself!' regarding it as the most difficult thing for every man. Or do you not think that folly is the greatest and most serious of all ailments and a blight to those that have it, and that a foolish man is his own greatest bane? Or do you not admit that he who is most harmful to a man and causes him the most ills is that man's greatest foe and adversary? In view of what I say rage and prance about," said he,  "and think me the greatest blackguard and slander me to the world and, if it be your pleasure, run me through with your spear; for I am the only man from whom you will get the truth, and you will learn it from no one else. For all are less honest than I and more servile."

Diogenes follows urging Alexander to be right and to trust  on good deeds and not on weapons. He asked to prepare his spirit, his demon, his daimon, his genius, to be free and fair and with feelings worthy of a king and not a slave and evil demon. He asks  in short to learn to think for himself.
He shows him  then, approaching the end of the speech, that they are  many vices and miseries of mortals and three dominant genres of life, (Cynics constantly whip them),  which ruin  the man and all governments must overcome them: the desire for wealth, the voluptuousness, and the lust for power.

Paragraphs 83 et seq.

"Now as there are, roughly speaking, three prevailing types of lives which the majority usually adopt, not after thoughtful consideration and testing, I assure you, but because they are carried away by chance and thoughtless impulse, we must affirm that there is just the same number of spirits whom the great mass of foolish humanity follows and serves — some men one spirit and some another — just as a wicked and wanton troop follows a wicked and frenzied leader. Of these types of lives which I have mentioned, the first is luxurious and self-indulgent as regards bodily pleasures, the second, in its turn, is acquisitive and avaricious, while the third is more conspicuous and more disordered than the other two — I mean the one that loves honour and glory — and it manifests a more evident and violent disorder or frenzy, deluding itself into believing that it is enamoured of some noble ideal.

The pretension to of Diogenes denouncing  these life forms is to change, if possible, human vice, lies, the evil desires, to lead them to be friends of virtue and lovers of a better life. So he describes starkly and in detail  these three types of vicious men. Often even they coincide in the same person two or three ways of being. He concludes:

Paragraphs 138 et seq.

and his soul, thus torn and distracted and ever in battle and ceaseless strife with itself, cannot but end its course in utter misery.

The reader will judge whether Alexander followed the teachings of the philosopher or he was uncontrolled victim of his own ambition and lust for power, because the truth is that along with the heroic, civilizing, conquering version, which  historical chronicles usually transmitted, there was another reality of death and destruction less glorious.

The post Dio Chrysostom recreates the meeting between Diogenes and Alexander and sets out his ideas about the divine origin of power. appeared first on History of Greece and Rome.

There is a strong and strange bond between people and the places where they spend their life. Moreover, these places have a strong appeal and create a strong desire to know and visit by those  who admire this people.

What a tourist in Verona does not visited thrilled the home of Romeo and Juliet, although having the doubt or evidence that this is a mere claim for the visitor? Are  not organized fervent tours around the Dublin of Joyce's Ulysses? We do not imagine smiling the figure of Archpriest hovering rogue around the girls who attend the celebration of the Festival in Hita (Spanish little town)?
Are not we turn curious the places of Cervantes, especially his  house in Alcala? And soon we will not go  serious and silent to the crypt of the Trinity convent of nuns in Madrid, where it seems that they had been found the remains of our most famous Spanish writer? And what about  Stratford on Avon in England, the birthplace of immortal Shakespeare? And about the classroom of the poet Antonio Machado and his walks along the river Duero in Soria or his grave at Collioure (France), or the chair of Fray Luis de León in Salamanca?

If it  has always been so, what will not happen now, when abundant and restless masses of tourists flock to any site with any claim?

Well, we have a really interesting document on which  Cicero and some friends visite  with emotion some of the places in Athens where the most illustrious and famous men of the educated and cultured Greece taught and lived .

Cicero, together with Brutus, Piso,  his brother Quintus, Titus Pomponius, and his cousin Lucius are in Athens and decided to take a walk through the Academy at noon because it is  the time when the place,  very depressed at this moment, are more solitary:

Cicero, De finibus (On the Ends of Good and Evil 5,1-8)

My dear Brutus, — Once I had been attending a lecture of Antiochus, as I was in the habit of doing, with Marcus Piso, in the building called the School of Ptolemy; and with us were my brother Quintus, Titus Pomponius, and Lucius Cicero, whom I loved as a brother but who was really my first cousin. We arranged to take our afternoon stroll in the Academy, chiefly because the place would be quiet and deserted at that hour of the day. Accordingly at the time appointed we met at our rendezvous, Piso's lodgings, and starting out beguiled with conversation on various subjects the three-quarters of a mile from the Dipylon Gate. When we reached the walks of the Academy, which are so deservedly famous, we had them entirely to ourselves, as we had hoped. 

Thereupon Piso remarked: "Whether it is a natural instinct or a mere illusion, I can't say; but one's emotions are more strongly aroused by seeing the places that tradition records to have been the favourite resort of men of note in former days, than by hearing about their deeds or reading their writings. My own feelings at the present moment are a case in point. I am reminded of Plato, the first philosopher, so we are told, that made a practice of holding discussions in this place; and indeed the garden close at hand yonder not only recalls his memory but seems to bring the actual man before my eyes. This was the haunt of Speusippus, of Xenocrates, and of Xenocrates' pupil Polemo, who used to sit on the very seat we see over there. For my own part even the sight of our senate-house at home (I mean the Curia Hostilia, not the present new building, which looks to my eyes smaller since its enlargement) used to call up to me thoughts of Scipio, Cato, Laelius, and chief of all, my grandfather;  such powers of suggestion do places possess. No wonder the scientific training of the memory is based upon locality."

"Perfectly true, Piso," rejoined Quintus. "I myself on the way here just now noticed yonder village of Colonus, and it brought to my imagination Sophocles who resided there, and who is as you know my great admiration and delight. Indeed my memory took me further back; for I had a vision of Oedipus, advancing towards this very spot and asking in those most tender verses, 'What place is this?' — a mere fancy no doubt, yet still it affected me strongly."

"For my part," said Pomponius, "you are fond of attacking me as a devotee of Epicurus, and I do spend much of my time with Phaedrus, who as you know is my dearest friend, in Epicurus's Gardens which we passed just now; but I obey the old saw: I 'think of those that are alive.' Still I could not forget Epicurus, even if I wanted; the members of our body not only have pictures of him, but even have his likeness on their drinking-cups and rings."
"As for our friend Pomponius," I interposed, "I believe he is joking; and no doubt he is a licensed wit, for he has so taken root in Athens that he is almost an Athenian; in fact I expect he will get the surname of Atticus!  But I, Piso, agree with you; it is a common experience that places do strongly stimulate the imagination and vivify our ideas of famous men. You remember how I once came with you to Metapontum, and would not go to the house where we were to stay until I had seen the very place where Pythagoras breathed his last and the seat he sat in. All over Athens, I know, there are many reminders of eminent men in the actual place where they lived; but at the present moment it is that alcove over there which appeals to me, for not long ago it belonged to Carneades. I fancy I see him now (for his portrait is familiar), and I can imagine that the very place where he used to sit misses the sound of his voice, and mourns the loss of that mighty intellect."

"Well, then," said Piso, "as we all have some association that appeals to us, what is it that interests our young friend Lucius? Does he enjoy visiting the spot where Demosthenes and Aeschines used to fight their battles? For we are all specially influenced by our own favourite study."

"Pray don't ask me," answer Lucius with a blush; "I have actually made a pilgrimage down to the Bay of Phalerum, where they say Demosthenes used to practise declaiming on the beach, to learn to pitch his voice so as to overcome an uproar. Also only just now I turned off the road a little way on the right, to visit the tomb of Pericles. Though in fact there is no end to it in this city; wherever we go we tread historic ground."

"Well, Cicero," said Piso, "these enthusiasms befit a young man of parts, if they lead him to copy the example of the great. If they only stimulate antiquarian curiosity, they are mere dilettantism. But we all of us exhort you — though I hope it is a case of spurring a willing steed — to resolve to imitate your heroes as well as to know about them." "He is practising your precepts already, Piso," said I, "as you are aware; but all the same thank you for encouraging him." "Well," said Piso, with his usual amiability, "let us all join forces to promote the lad's improvement; and especially let us try to make him spare some of his interest for philosophy, either so as to follow the example of yourself for whom he has such an affection, or in order to be better equipped for the very study to which he is devoted. But, Lucius," he asked, "do you need our urging, or have you a natural leaning of your own towards philosophy? You are keeping Antiochus's lectures, and seem to me to be a pretty attentive pupil." "I try to be," replied Lucius with a timid or rather a modest air; "but have you heard any lectures on Carneades lately? He attracts me immensely; but Antiochus calls me in the other direction; and there is no other lecturer to go to."

"Perhaps," said Piso, "it will not be altogether easy, while our friend here" (meaning me) "is by, still I will venture to urge you to leave the present New Academy for the Old, which includes, as you heard Antiochus declare, not only those who bear the name of Academics, Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemo, Crantor and the rest, but also the early Peripatetics, headed by their chief, Aristotle, who, if Plato be excepted, I almost think deserves to be called the prince of philosophers. Do you then join them, I beg of you. From their writings and teachings can be learnt the whole of liberal culture, of history and of style; moreover they include such a variety of sciences, that without the equipment that they give no one can be adequately prepared to embark on any of the higher careers. They have produced orators, generals and statesmen. To come to the less distinguished professions, this factory of experts in all the sciences has turned out mathematicians, poets, musicians and physicians."  "You know that I agree with you about that, Piso," I replied; "but you have raised the point most opportunely; for my cousin Cicero is eager to hear the doctrine of the Old Academy of which you speak, and of the Peripatetics, on the subject of the Ends of Goods. We feel sure you can expound it with the greatest ease, for you have had Staseas from Naples in your household for many years, and also we know you have been studying this very subject under Antiochus for several months at Athens." "Here goes, then," replied Piso, smiling, "(for you have rather craftily arranged for our discussion to start with me), let me see what I can do to give the lad a lecture. If an oracle had foretold that I should find myself discoursing in the Academy like a philosopher, I should not have believed it, but here I am, thanks to our having the place to ourselves. Only don't let me bore the rest of you while I am obliging our young friend." "What, bore me?" said I. "Why, it is I who asked you to speak." Thereupon Quintus and Pomponius having declared that they wished it too, Piso began. And I will ask you, Brutus, kindly to consider whether you think his discourse a satisfactory summary of the doctrine of Antiochus, which I believe to be the system which you most approve, as you have often attended the lectures of his.  (English translatiion by H. Harris Rackham. the Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1931.)

Let us conclude, as Piso said, that  visits to these so full of science, art and wisdom places, do not should be  due only to a mere tourist attraction but to the desire of imitating artists, and they should serve for at least some of the authors remain within us and affect us.

Cicero, De Finibus, 5, 1-8 

Cum audissem Antiochum, Brute, ut solebam, cum M. Pisone in eo gymnasio, quod Ptolomaeum vocatur,  unaque nobiscum Q. frater et T. Pomponius Luciusque Cicero, frater noster cognatione patruelis, amore germanus, constituimus inter nos ut ambulationem postmeridianam conficeremus in Academia, maxime quod is locus ab omni turba id temporis vacuus esset. itaque ad tempus ad Pisonem omnes. inde sermone vario sex illa a Dipylo stadia confecimus. cum autem venissemus in Academiae non sine causa nobilitata spatia, solitudo erat ea, quam volueramus.  tum Piso: Naturane nobis hoc, inquit, datum dicam an errore quodam, ut, cum ea loca videamus, in quibus memoria dignos viros acceperimus multum esse versatos, magis moveamur, quam si quando eorum ipsorum aut facta audiamus aut scriptum aliquod legamus? velut ego nunc moveor. venit enim mihi Platonis in mentem, quem accepimus primum hic disputare solitum; cuius etiam illi hortuli propinqui non memoriam solum mihi afferunt, sed ipsum videntur in conspectu meo ponere. hic Speusippus, hic Xenocrates, hic eius auditor Polemo, cuius illa ipsa sessio fuit, quam videmus. Equidem etiam curiam nostram—Hostiliam dico, non hanc novam, quae minor mihi esse videtur, posteaquam est maior—solebam intuens Scipionem, Catonem, Laelium, nostrum vero in primis avum cogitare; tanta vis admonitionis inest in locis; ut non sine causa ex iis memoriae ducta sit disciplina. 

Tum Quintus: Est plane, Piso, ut dicis, inquit. nam me ipsum huc modo venientem convertebat ad sese Coloneus ille locus, cuius incola Sophocles ob oculos versabatur, quem scis quam admirer quamque eo delecter. me quidem ad altiorem memoriam Oedipodis huc venientis et illo mollissimo carmine quaenam essent ipsa haec loca requirentis species quaedam commovit, inaniter scilicet, sed commovit tamen.

Tum Pomponius: At ego, quem vos ut deditum Epicuro insectari soletis, sum multum equidem cum Phaedro, quem unice diligo, ut scitis, in Epicuri hortis, quos modo praeteribamus,  sed veteris proverbii admonitu vivorum memini, nec tamen Epicuri licet oblivisci, si cupiam, cuius imaginem non modo in tabulis nostri familiares, sed etiam in poculis et in anulis habent.
Hic ego: Pomponius quidem, inquam, noster iocari videtur, et fortasse suo iure. ita enim se Athenis collocavit, ut sit paene unus ex Atticis, ut id etiam cognomen videatur habiturus. Ego autem tibi, Piso, assentior usu hoc venire, ut acrius aliquanto et attentius de claris viris locorum admonitu cogitemus. scis enim me quodam tempore Metapontum venisse tecum neque ad hospitem ante devertisse, quam Pythagorae ipsum illum locum, ubi vitam ediderat, sedemque viderim. hoc autem tempore, etsi multa in omni parte Athenarum sunt in ipsis locis indicia summorum virorum, tamen ego illa moveor exhedra. modo enim fuit Carneadis, quem videre videor—est enim nota imago—, a sedeque ipsa tanta ingenii magnitudine orbata desiderari illam vocem puto.

Tum Piso: Quoniam igitur aliquid omnes, quid Lucius noster? inquit. an eum locum libenter invisit, ubi Demosthenes et Aeschines inter se decertare soliti sunt? suo enim quisque studio maxime ducitur.

Et ille, cum erubuisset: Noli, inquit, ex me quaerere, qui in Phalericum etiam descenderim, quo in loco ad fluctum aiunt declamare solitum Demosthenem, ut  fremitum assuesceret voce vincere. modo etiam paulum ad dexteram de via declinavi, ut ad Pericli sepulcrum accederem. quamquam id quidem infinitum est in hac urbe; quacumque enim ingredimur, in aliqua historia vestigium ponimus.

Tum Piso: Atqui, Cicero, inquit, ista studia, si ad imitandos summos viros spectant, ingeniosorum sunt; sin tantum modo ad indicia veteris memoriae cognoscenda, curiosorum. te autem hortamur omnes, currentem quidem, ut spero, ut eos, quos novisse vis, imitari etiam velis.
Hic ego: Etsi facit hic quidem, inquam, Piso, ut vides, ea, quae praecipis, tamen mihi grata hortatio tua est.

Tum ille amicissime, ut solebat: Nos vero, inquit, omnes omnia ad huius adolescentiam conferamus, in primisque ut aliquid suorum studiorum philosophiae quoque impertiat, vel ut te imitetur, quem amat, vel ut illud ipsum, quod studet, facere possit ornatius. sed utrum hortandus es nobis, Luci, inquit, an etiam tua sponte propensus es? mihi quidem Antiochum, quem audis, satis belle videris attendere.

Tum ille timide vel potius verecunde: Facio, inquit, equidem, sed audistine modo de Carneade? rapior illuc, revocat autem Antiochus, nec est praeterea, quem audiamus.

Tum Piso: Etsi hoc, inquit, fortasse non poterit sic abire, cum hic assit—me autem dicebat—, tamen audebo te ab hac Academia nova ad veterem illam vocare, in qua, ut dicere Antiochum audiebas, non ii soli numerantur, qui Academici vocantur, Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemo, Crantor ceterique, sed etiam Peripatetici  veteres, quorum princeps Aristoteles, quem excepto Platone haud scio an recte dixerim principem philosophorum. ad eos igitur converte te, quaeso. ex eorum enim scriptis et institutis cum omnis doctrina liberalis, omnis historia, omnis sermo elegans sumi potest, tum varietas est tanta artium, ut nemo sine eo instrumento ad ullam rem illustriorem satis ornatus possit accedere. ab his oratores, ab his imperatores ac rerum publicarum principes extiterunt. ut ad minora veniam, mathematici, poetae, musici, medici denique ex hac tamquam omnium artificum officina profecti sunt.

Atque ego: Scis me, inquam, istud idem sentire, Piso, sed a te oportune facta mentio est. studet enim meus audire Cicero quaenam sit istius veteris, quam commemoras, Academiae de finibus bonorum Peripateticorumque sententia. censemus autem facillime te id explanare posse, quod et Staseam Neapolitanum multos annos habueris apud te et complures iam menses Athenis haec ipsa te ex Antiocho videamus exquirere.

Et ille ridens: Age, age, inquit,—satis enim scite me nostri sermonis principium esse voluisti—exponamus adolescenti, si quae forte possumus. dat enim id nobis solitudo, quod si qui deus diceret, numquam putarem me in Academia tamquam philosophum disputaturum. sed ne, dum huic obsequor, vobis molestus sim.

Mihi, inquam, qui te id ipsum rogavi?

Tum, Quintus et Pomponius cum idem se velle dixissent, Piso exorsus est. cuius oratio attende, quaeso, Brute, satisne videatur Antiochi complexa esse sententiam, quam tibi, qui fratrem eius Aristum frequenter audieris, maxime probatam existimo.

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It is a Latin maxim remarkably rooted in the West because it has become a Latin proverb or phrase or sentence, like many others which in its conciseness and brevity are loaded with meaning content.

Many citizens who reject a stickler and mechanical application of the law, which, as it is  collected on Digesta Iustiniani, 40,  9.12 on another lapidary sentence also,  is always hard: Dura lex, sed lex, The law is harsh, but it is the law.

There are also many supporters of a harsh application. Perhaps without an enough  knowledge of the situation, I have the personal impression that the law is a stickler application in the US, although the Anglo-Saxon tradition of law based on the experience of the application, which applies in Britain, it would seem advise the opposite.

The origin of this phrase does not appear in the world of law itself, because it contains within itself a contradiction or denial of the law itself. It seems rather collect the value of experience in the application, which advised to consider the circumstances of the breach of the rule and its application.

From a rhetorical point of view it would be a kind of an oxymoron ((gr. Ὀξύμωρον) or union of two ideas of contradictory significance or "ingenious absurdity" as they call the Greek, or in Latin "contradictio in terminis" (contradictio in terms –linguistic terms-), which is explained by the context.  The word “oxymoron” comes from the Greek ὀξύς (oxys,  'sharp, stabbing') and μωρός (morós. 'flabby, dull, stupid'); so that the same word is a example of an oxymoron.

It can also be seen as a case of "etymological figure" or use of various forms derived from the same lexeme:  "iniuria", derived from “ius”, refuses it.

The phrase such as "summum ius summa iniuria" only appears in Cicero on his work “On Duties” (De officiis I, 33), which later I will comment.

It is cited as precedent a very similar text of a comedy of Terence.  Terence used in its Heautontimorumenos (The tormentor of himself) the term "summum ius saepe malitia summa'st", " Extreme law, often extreme evil”.

Terence, the Latin author of comedies, is directly inspired, if not literally translator,  in the Greek comedies of Menander.  This fact and the Greek influence  also in Cicero himself, suggests that the origin of the phrase would be in the Greek world, but we do not keep the work of Menander to check it.

In any case it is true that it is arisen in the Greek world the question of the relationship between justice δίκαιον, dikaion, νόμος , nomos, the law, and ἐπιείκεια, epiqueya, equity. 

Note that in the implementation of the right of Attica it is preferred the arbitration and the conciliatory proposals than the exclusive performance of the courts.

Cicero, collecting definitely  an opinion and widespread citizen feeling, rejects  or warns of the formalistic and literal rigidity of Roman law, as it is clear from the examples adduced in the text that I will immediately transcribe, without claiming why that the judgment Iuridicum question was part of the corpus iuridicum itself.

"Epikeia" ἐπιείκεια (equity), is a Greek term, with legal value, which refers to the concrete application of a law, which is always general, to the specific cases which are real. It is a moral virtue that allows a person not to apply the literal observation of a positive rule to respect and be faithful to the meaning or true spirit of the regulation itself. The dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy defines it as: 1. f. Moderate and cautious interpretation of the law, according to the circumstances of time, place and person.

The ancients (Plato, Aristotle, …) devoted much time to this issue of "epikeia" and therefore the meaning and value of the law as an instrument for its application. This subject certainly deserves an article that I will do.

So the first Latin text with this phrase corresponds to Terence, who, as I  said in his Heautontimorumenos (The tormentor of himself), Act IV, Scene 5.48 (v. 796) uses the term "ius summum saepe summa'st malitia ".

Note: the  comedy of Terence, copy or a simply translation of one similar of Menander, was represented for the first time in the year 163 BC. On it Menedemus, another elderly father torments himself and regrets being too stern father who forced his son Clinias to run away from home  and enlist in a foreign army. Then the play is developed  around a love affair typical of these comedies.

HEAVTON TIMORVMENOS 795 (Act4,5,48)

SYRUS: But for my part, Chremes, I take it well and good, either way.

CHREMES: But still, I especially wish you to do your best for it to be brought about; but in some other way.

SYRUS: It shall be done: some other method must be thought of; but as to what I was telling you of,–about the money which she owes to Bacchis,–that must now be repaid her. And you will not, of course, now be having recourse to this method; "What have I to do with it? Was it lent to me? Did I give any orders? Had she the power to pawn my daughter without my consent?" They quote that saying, Chremes, with good reason, " Riorous law1 is often rigorous injustice."

CHREMES: I will not do so.

SYRUS: On the contrary, though others were at liberty, you are not at liberty; all think that you are in good and very easy circumstances. 
(Translation by Henry Thomas Riley, Ed.)

SYRUS: (servus)Caeterum equidem istuc, Chrene,
Aequi bonique facio.

CHREMES:  (pater)atqui quam maxume
volo te dare operam ut fiat, verum alia via.

SYRUS : fiat, quaeratur aliquid. sed illud quod tibi      790
dixi de argento quod ista debet Bacchidi,
id nunc reddendumst illi: neque tu scilicet
illuc confugies: "quid mea? num mihi datumst?
num iussi? num illa oppignerare filiam
meam me invito potuit?" verum illuc, Chreme,       795
dicunt: "ius summum saepe summast malitia."

CHREMES. haud faciam.

SYRUS. immo aliis si licet, tibi non licet:
“omnes te in lauta et bene acta parte putant.”

The phrase of Cicero is the only one that appears as such in Latin literature. It appears in his work On Duties (De officiis) lib.I, 33.

Injustice often arises also through chicanery, that is, through an over-subtle and even fraudulent construction of the law. This it is that gave rise to the now familiar saw, “More law, less justice.” Through such interpretation also a great deal of wrong is committed in transactions between state and state; thus, when a truce had been made with the enemy for thirty days, a famous general went to ravaging their fields by night, because, he said, the truce stipulated “days,” not nights. Not even our own countryman's action is to be commended, if what is told of Quintus Fabius Labeo is true—or whoever it was (for I have no authority but hearsay): appointed by the Senate to arbitrate a boundary dispute between Nola and Naples, he took up the case and interviewed both parties separately, asking them not to proceed in a covetous or grasping spirit, but to make some concession rather than claim some accession. When each party had agreed to this, there was a considerable strip of territory left between them. And so he set the boundary of each city as each had severally agreed; and the tract in between he awarded to the Roman People. Now that is swindling, not arbitration. And therefore such sharp practice is under all circumstances to be avoided.
Again, there are certain duties that we owe even to those who have wronged us. For there is a limit to retribution and to punishment; or rather, I am inclined to think, it is sufficient that the aggressor should be brought to repent of his wrong-doing, in [p. 37] order that he may not repeat the offence and that others may be deterred from doing wrong.

Then, too, in the case of a state in its external relations, the rights of war must be strictly observed. For since there are two ways of settling a dispute: first, by discussion; second, by physical force; and since the former is characteristic of man, the latter of the brute, we must resort to force only in case we may not avail ourselves of discussion. (English Translation. Walter Miller. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1913.)

This story is told of Cleomenes, King of Sparta (520- 491 B.C.), in the war with Argos. (Plutarch, on  Apophthegmata Laconica, 223A) 

DE OFFICIIS LIBER PRIMVS 33

Existunt etiam saepe iniuriae calumnia quadam et nimis callida sed malitiosa iuris interpretatione. Ex quo illud "summum ius summa iniuria" factum est iam tritum sermone proverbium. Quo in genere etiam in re publica multa peccantur, ut ille, qui, cum triginta dierum essent cum hoste indutiae factae, noctu populabatur agros, quod dierum essent pactae, non noctium indutiae. Ne noster quidem probandus, si verum est Q. Fabium Labeonem seu quem alium–nihil enim habeo praeter auditum –arbitrum Nolanis et Neapolitanis de finibus a senatu datum, cum ad locum venisset, cum utrisque separatim locutum, ne cupide quid agerent, ne appetenter, atque ut regredi quam progredi mallent. Id cum utrique fecissent, aliquantum agri in medio relictum est. Itaque illorum finis sic, ut ipsi dixerant, terminavit; in medio relictum quod erat, populo Romano adiudicavit. Decipere hoc quidem est, non iudicare. Quocirca in omni est re fugienda talis sollertia.

Sunt autem quaedam officia etiam adversus eos servanda, a quibus iniuriam acceperis. Est enim ulciscendi et puniendi modus; atque haud scio an satis sit eum, qui lacessierit, iniuriae suae paenitere, ut et ipse ne quid tale posthac et ceteri sint ad iniuriam tardiores.

Atque in re publica maxime conservanda sunt iura belli. Nam cum sint duo genera decertandi, unum per disceptationem, alterum per vim, cumque illud proprium sit hominis, hoc beluarum, confugiendum est ad posterius, si uti non licet superiore.

Interestingly we find an appointment on Columella, author of a work on agriculture, based on the relationship of master and owner of the land with his colonists; He says in De re rustica, Book I, 7:

After all these arrangements have been acquired or contrived, especial care is demanded of the master not only in other matters, but most of all in the matter of the persons in his service; and these are either tenant-farmers or slaves, whether unfettered or in chains. He should be civil in dealing with his tenants, should show himself affable, and should be more exacting in the matter of work than of payments, as this gives less offence yet is, generally speaking, more profitable. For when land is carefully tilled it usually brings a profit, and never a loss, except when it is assailed by unusually severe weather or by robbers; and for that reason the tenant does not venture to ask for reduction of his rent.  But the master should not be insistent on his rights in every particular to which he has bound his tenant, such as the exact day for payment, or p81the matter of demanding firewood and other trifling services in addition, attention to which causes country-folk more trouble than expense; in fact, we should not lay claim to all that the law allows, for the ancients regarded the extreme of the law as the extreme of oppression. (The English translation  is that of the Loeb Classical Library edition: Vol. I (Books 1 4) by H. B. Ash, first published in 1941).

His omnibus ita vel acceptis vel compositis, praecipua cura domini requiritur, cum in ceteris rebus, tum maxime in hominibus. Atque hi vel coloni vel servi sunt, soluti aut vincti. Comiter agat cum colonis, facilemque se praebeat. Avarius opus exigat quam pensiones, quoniam et minus id offendit, et tamen in universum magis prodest. Nam ubi sedulo colitur ager, plerumque compendium, numquam (nisi si caeli maior vis aut praedonis accessit) detrimentum affert, eoque remissionem colonus petere non audet. Sed nec dominus in unaquaque re, cum colonum obligaverit, tenax esse iuris debet, sicut in diebus pecuniarum, ut lignis et ceteris parvis accessionibus exigendis, quarum cura maiorem molestiam quam impensam rusticis licet. Nec sane est vindicandum nobis quidquid licet. Nam summum ius antiqui summam putabant crucem.

Note that Columella replaced "iniuria" by "crucem", cross, with the meaning  of punishment, which also moves away  the expression of the legal technical language.

There is another curious appointment at the first of the letters of St. Jerome (c.340-420), which in this case he sends to his fellow Innocent. On it he tells the miraculous story of a Christian girl falsely accused by her husband of adultery. She denies the accusation relying on God's help. The executioner tries execute her six times in vain; every time he downloads the stroke of his sword on the neck of the young, the sword is stopped by contact with meat. A second executioner finally gets at the seventh attempt to kill the girl, who suddenly comes to life with God's help. Meanwhile another woman has died, who replaces  the first at the tomb; the revived girl is hidden on a nearby farm. But behold, a zealous officer suspects something and asks to see again the body of the young. That's when Jerome exclaims on paragraph 14 of the letter:
 
Before such opprobrious words the executioner retires in confusion, while the woman is secretly revived at home. Then, lest the frequency  of the doctor's visits to the church might give occasion for suspicion,    they cut her hair short and send her in the company of some virgins to a sequestered country house. There she changes her dress for that of a man, and scars form over her wounds. Yet even after the great miracles worked on her behalf, the laws still rage against her. So true is it that, where there is most law, there, there is also most injustice. (Freemantle, M.A., The Hon. W.H. Translator), 1892)

Tali invidia carnifice confuso clam domi mulier fodiatur et, ne forte creber ad ecclesiam medici commeatus suspicionis panderet viam, eum quibusdam virginibus ad secretiorem villulam secto crine transmittitur. Ibi paulatim virili habitu veste mutata in cicatricem vulnus obducitur. Et—‘ O vere ius summum summa malitia! ’—post tanta miracula adhuc saeviunt leges.
Interestingly, Jerome uses the term of Terence "summa malitia" and not that of Cicero "summa iniuria", which is what has become widespread later, probably by the colorful and rhetoric contrast "ius / in-iuria".

In short, the proverb warns us that rigorous and literal application of positive law, can produce great damage, so the judge or bailiff must act on the advice of the equity; otherwise the law and justice can become ironically an  injustice.

This explains what the Spanish Civil Code states in Article 3:

Article 3.

1. Rules shall be interpreted according to the meaning of his own words, in relation to the context, historical and legislative history, and the social reality of the time on that must be applied, mainly in response to the spirit and purpose of those.

2. Equity must be weighed in the application of the rules, although the decisions of the tribunals can only rest exclusively on it when the law expressly permits it.

The proverb, moreover, is widespread in all languages, including: on  English: Rigorous law is often rigorous injustice./ Extreme law, extreme injustice; on Italian: il sommo diritto è somma ingiustizia or Gran giustizia, grande offesa; on French: Excès de justice, excès d’injustice; on German: Das strengste Recht, das grösste Unrecht.

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