11 When Dionysius told Plato that he would have his throat cut, Xenocrates, who was present, pointed to his own and said, “Not before you cut mine.” They also say that when Antipater came to Athens and greeted him, Xenocrates kept on with the conversation he was in before returning his greeting. He was the least puffed up of men; he would often, in the course of a day, withdraw into himself, and it is said that he used to assign an entire hour to silence.
12,13 He left a great many writings, poems, and addresses, which are listed below:
On Nature, six books
On Wisdom, six books
On Wealth, one book
The Arcadian, one book
On the Indeterminate, one book
On the Child, one book
On Self-Control, one book
On Usefulness, one book
On Freedom, one book
On Death, one book
On Volition, one book
On Friendship, two books
On Fairness, one book
On What Is Contrary, two books
On Happiness, two books
On Writing, one book
On Memory, one book
On Falsehood, one book
Callicles, one book
On Prudence, two books
The Householder, one book
On Temperance, one book
On the Power of Law, one book
On the Republic, one book
On Piety, one book
That Virtue Can Be Taught, one book
On Being, one book
On Fate, one book
On the Emotions, one book
On Ways of Life, one book
On Concord, one book
On Students, two books
On Justice, one book
On Virtue, two books
On Forms, one book
On Pleasure, two books
On Life, one book
On Courage, one book
On the One, one book
On Ideas, one book
On Art, one book
On the Gods, two books
On the Soul, two books
On Knowledge, one book
The Statesman, one book
On Skill, one book
On Philosophy, one book
On Parmenides’ Works, one book
Archedemus or On Justice, one book
On the Good, one book
On Matters Concerning the Intellect, eight books
Solution of Logical Problems, ten books
Lectures on Nature, six books
Summary, one book
On Genera and Species, one book
On Matters Pythagorean, one book
Solutions, two books
Divisions, eight books
Theses, twenty books, 30,000 lines
The Study of Dialectic, fourteen books, 12,740 lines
14 After this come fifteen books, and then sixteen books of Studies on Style
Calculations, nine books
On Mathematics, six books
On Matters Concerning the Intellect, two other books
On Geometers, five books
Commentaries, one book
Contraries, one book
On Numbers, one book
Theory of Numbers, one book
On Dimensions, one book
On Astronomy, six books
Elementary Principles of Monarchy, four books, dedicated to Alexander27
To Arybas
To Hephaestion
On Geometry, two books
In all, 224,239 lines.
15 But despite his character, the Athenians put him up for sale when he was unable to pay the tax levied on resident aliens.28 And Demetrius of Phalerum29 purchased him, thereby making restitution to both parties: to Xenocrates of his freedom, to the Athenians of their tax. This is reported by Myronianus of Amastris in the first book of his Chapters on Historical Parallels. Xenocrates succeeded Speusippus and was head of the school for twenty-five years from the archonship of Lysimachides in the second year of the 110th Olympiad.30 He died at the age of eighty-two from injuries sustained when he stumbled against a basin at night. My own verses about him run as follows:
Stumbling over a bronze vessel and breaking his head,
He cried “Oh” and breathed his last;
Xenocrates, that matchless ideal, a man in full.
There have been five other men named Xenocrates: a tactician in quite ancient times; the kinsman and fellow citizen of the philosopher (a speech of his exists, Arsinoetica, written on the occasion of the death of Arsinoe).31 The fourth a philosopher and unsuccessful writer of elegies. (As a rule, poets who undertake to write prose meet with success, while prose writers who attempt poetry do not; this makes it clear that the one is a gift of nature and the other of art.) The fifth a sculptor; and the sixth a writer of songs, according to Aristoxenus.
The Conversion of Polemon, by James Barry, 1778.
Polemon
16 Polemon, son of Philostratus, was an Athenian who belonged to the deme of Oea. As a youth he was so unbridled and promiscuous that he carried money about with him to procure the immediate gratification of his desires. He even kept sums hidden in narrow lanes. And even in the Academy a three-obol piece was found next to a pillar, where he had buried it for the same purpose.32 One day, by agreement with his young friends, he burst into Xenocrates’ school in a drunken state, wearing a garland on his head.33 Unperturbed, Xenocrates proceeded with his discourse as before, its subject being temperance. The boy, as he listened, was gradually captivated, and thereafter became so diligent that he surpassed all the others and eventually became head of the school in the 116th Olympiad.34
17 Antigonus of Carystus says in his Lives that Polemon’s father was a leading citizen and that he kept chariot horses; that Polemon himself was a defendant in an action brought by his wife, who charged him with ill usage on the grounds of his liaisons with young men;35 but that from the time he began to study philosophy he developed such strength of character that his demeanor remained the same on all occasions. Even his voice never varied, which is why Crantor36 was fascinated by him. At any rate, when a mad dog bit him in the back of the thigh, he did not even turn pale, and remained unmoved by the uproar that arose in the city at the news of what had happened.
18 In the theaters too he was utterly impassive. At any rate, once when Nicostratus, who was nicknamed Clytemnestra, was reading to him and Crates something from the poet’s work,37 Crates was deeply touched, while Polemon was no more moved than if he had not heard him. He was in every sense the type of man Melanthius the painter describes in his work On Painting. There he says that a certain willfulness and austerity should imbue a man’s works, and likewise his character. Polemon used to say that we should exercise ourselves with facts and not with dialectical speculations; otherwise, like a man who has imbibed some little handbook on harmony but never practiced, we may be admired for our ability to pose questions, but will be at variance with ourselves in the ordering of our lives.
19 He was urbane and noble, and would beg pardon for what Aristophanes calls (in reference to Euripides) his “sharp and pungent style,” which the comic poet says is
rude rump-thumping, compared with juicy steak.38
20 Furthermore, Polemon would not even sit down when discussing his students’ themes, they say, but would argue while walking about. Certainly it was for his love of what is noble that he was honored in the city. Nevertheless, he would withdraw from society and pass his days in the garden, where his students, erecting little shelters, would camp near the shrine of the Muses and the arcade.39 It would appear that in all respects Polemon emulated Xenocrates; according to Aristippus,40 in the fourth book of his work On the Luxuriousness of the Ancients, he had been the man’s beloved. At any rate, Polemon had Xenocrates constantly in mind, and clothed himself in the man’s candor, austerity, and gravity, which characterize the Dorian mode. He also loved Sophocles, especially in the passages where it seemed a
s if, in the comic poet’s phrase,
Three views of a statuette of a youth dancing, Hellenistic, late fourth century BC. The crown of myrtle he wears is an attribute of followers of the god Dionysus.
Some Molossian hound were lending him aid,
and where the poet was, in the words of Phrynichus,
Neither sweet wine, nor blended vintage, but true Pramnian.41
He used to call Homer the Sophocles of epic, and Sophocles the Homer of tragedy.
He died in old age of consumption, leaving behind a considerable number of written works. My own verses about him run as follows:
Haven’t you heard? We have buried Polemon, laid here
By mortal weakness, the terrible scourge of mankind.
Or rather, not Polemon himself, but his body, which he,
Ascending to the stars, left to be eaten up in the ground.
Crates
21 Crates was the son of Antigenes, of the deme of Thria. He was both the student and the beloved of Polemon, whom he also succeeded as head of the school. The two were so devoted to each other that they not only shared the same pursuits in life, but became increasingly alike up to their last breath, and on dying shared the same tomb. Hence Antagoras wrote of both as follows:
Stranger, say that in this tomb lie
Godlike Crates and Polemon,
Men great-hearted in concord, from whose divine lips
Sprang sacred speech, and whose pure life of wisdom,
Obedient to unshakable tenets,
Adorned them for divine eternity.
22 Hence Arcesilaus,42 who came to them after leaving Theophrastus,43 said that they were gods or survivors from the Golden Age. For they were not inclined to side with the people, but were instead the sort of men they say Dionysodorus the flute player claimed to be, who prided himself that no one had ever heard his melodies, as those of Ismenias were heard, either on shipboard or beside a well. Antigonus says Crates took his meals at Crantor’s table, and that these two and Arcesilaus lived together in harmony. Arcesilaus shared a house with Crantor, while Polemon and Crates lived with Lysicles, one of their fellow citizens. Crates, he says, and as we mentioned earlier, was Polemon’s beloved, while Arcesilaus was Crantor’s.
23 When Crates died
There have been ten men named Crates: the first was a poet of the Old Comedy; the second an orator from Tralles who had studied with Isocrates; the third an excavator of trenches who accompanied Alexander; the fourth the Cynic, of whom we will speak;48 the fifth a Peripatetic philosopher; the sixth our present subject, the Academic philosopher; the seventh a grammarian from Malos; the eighth an author of a work on geometry; the ninth a writer of epigrams; and the tenth an Academic philosopher from Tarsus.
Crantor
24,25 Crantor of Soli,49 though admired in his own country, sailed to Athens and studied with Xenocrates at the same time as Polemon.50 He left commentaries running to thirty thousand lines, some of which have been attributed to Arcesilaus. They say that when asked why he was so fascinated by Polemon, Crantor said he had never heard the man raise or lower his voice. Falling ill, he withdrew to the temple of Asclepius, where he walked about while discoursing. Others flocked to him from all sides, thinking that he had gone there not as a result of an illness, but because he wished to open a school. Among them was Arcesilaus, who wished to be introduced by him to Polemon, though Crantor was his lover, as will be related in the life of Arcesilaus. But even when Crantor recovered, he continued to study with Polemon, and for this he was highly admired. It is also said that he left his property, which amounted to twelve talents,51 to Arcesilaus. And when asked by him where he wished to be buried, he replied,
It’s fine to be buried in some lovely corner of one’s native land.52
It is also said that he wrote poems and deposited them under seal in the temple of Athena in his native country. The poet Theaetetus speaks of him as follows:
Pleasing to men, and still more to the Muses,
Was Crantor, who never saw old age.
Receive, O earth, the sacred dead;
He lives below in peace and prosperity.
26 Crantor admired Homer and Euripides beyond all other poets; he said that it is difficult to write in a tragic vein and at the same time to stir emotions using ordinary language. And he would quote the line from the tale of Bellerophon:53
Alas! But why alas? We have suffered the lot of mortals.
27 And it is said that in these lines of the poet Antagoras we have Crantor speaking on Love:
My heart is in doubt—since your birth is disputed, Eros—
Whether I am to call you the first of the immortal gods,
The eldest of all the children whom ancient Erebos and queenly Night
Brought to birth in the depths of wide Ocean;
Or the child of wise Cypris,54 or of Earth, or of the Winds.
What evils you devise for men in your wanderings,
And what goods! Even your body takes two forms.
He was also clever at coining phrases. At any rate, he said of a certain tragedian’s words that they were unhewn and full of bark. And of a certain poet that his verses abounded in miserliness. And that Theophrastus’ theses had been written in purple ink.55 His most admired work is his book On Grief. He died before Polemon and Crates, having fallen ill of dropsy. My own verses about him run as follows:
The worst of ailments overwhelmed you, Crantor,
And thus you descended to the black abyss of Pluto.56
And there you may {now} rejoice, but the Academy and Soli,
Your native land, are bereft of your discourses.
Arcesilaus
28 Arcesilaus, son of Seuthes (or Scythes, as Apollodorus says in the third book of his Chronology), was from Pitane in Aeolis. It was he who inaugurated the Middle Academy.57 He was the first to suspend judgment in light of the contradictions in opposing arguments. He was also the first to attempt to argue both sides of a question, and the first to modify the system handed down by Plato and to make it more eristic58 by means of question and answer.
29 He became acquainted with Crantor in this way. He was the youngest of four brothers, two of whom had the same father, two the same mother. Of the latter two Pylades was the elder, and of the former Moereas, who was his guardian. At first, before he sailed for Athens, he studied with the mathematician Autolycus, his countryman, with whom he also traveled to Sardis. Next he studied with Xanthus, the Athenian musician; then he became a student of Theophrastus.59 Leaving Theophrastus, he came to the Academy to join Crantor. For though his brother Moereas, whom we mentioned above, wanted to make an orator of him, he himself loved philosophy, and Crantor, who was in love with him, asked him the question from Euripides’ Andromeda:60
O maiden, if I save you, will you be grateful to me?
To this Arcesilaus replied with the line that comes next:
Take me, stranger, whether as a serving woman or a wife.
30 From then on they lived together, whereupon Theophrastus, provoked at his loss, is said to have remarked, “What a clever and courageous lad has left my school!” For besides being highly adept in argument and a lover of books, Arcesilaus also took up poetry. His epigram about Attalus61 runs as follows:
Pergamon, not famed for arms alone, is often
Celebrated for its steeds in divine Pisa.
But if a mere mortal may be permitted to declare the will of Zeus,
It will be much more sung of by bards in days to come.
&
nbsp; 31 And about Menodorus, the beloved of Eudamus, one of his fellow students:
Far off lie Phrygia and sacred Thyatira,62
Your native land, Menodorus, son of Cadauas.
But to unutterable Acheron63 the paths are equal,
From whatever point they are measured, as the proverb says.64
In your honor Eudamus has erected this eminent tomb,
Since you were dearest to him of the many who labored for him.
He appreciated Homer beyond all poets and would always read a passage from him before going to sleep. And in the morning, whenever he wanted to read him, he would say he was going off to visit his beloved. He also considered Pindar remarkable for the fullness of his diction and his vast store of words and expressions. And as a young man he interpreted the works of Ion.65
32 He also studied with the geometer Hipponicus, whom he jokingly observed was sluggish in everything else and constantly yawning, but highly accomplished in his own field. “Geometry,” he said, “flew into his mouth while he was yawning.” When Hipponicus suffered a fit of madness, Arcesilaus took him home and nursed him until he had recovered.
33 When Crates died, Arcesilaus took over the school, a certain Socratides having withdrawn in his favor. According to some, he never wrote a book because he suspended judgment on all matters. Others report that he was caught revising certain works, which according to some he published, according to others he burned. He seems to have admired Plato, and he owned copies of his works. Some say that he also emulated Pyrrho.66 He was devoted to dialectic and adopted the methods of argument of the Eretrian school.67 This is why Ariston said of him:
Lives of the Eminent Philosophers Page 24
