Delphi Complete Works of Dio Chrysostom

by Dio Chrysostom

  [65] With these words Diogenes strove to encourage him to put his trust in well-doing and devotion to righteousness and not in arms.

  “But you,” he continued, “also carry in your soul a keen-whetted temper, a goad difficult to restrain, as we see, and compelling. [66] Will you not throw off this armour which you now wear, don a worker’s tunic, and serve your betters, instead of going about wearing a ridiculous diadem? And perhaps before long you will grow a comb or tiara as cocks do? Have you never heard about the Sacian feast held by the Persians, against whom you are now preparing to take the field?” [67] And Alexander at once asked him what it was like, he wished to know all about the Persians. “Well, they take one of their prisoners,” he explained, “who has been condemned to death, set him upon the king’s throne, give him the royal apparel, and permit him to give orders, to drink and carouse, and to dally with the royal concubines during those days, and no one prevents his doing anything he pleases. But after that they strip and scourge him and then hang him. [68] Now what do you suppose this is meant to signify and what is the purpose of this Persian custom? Is it not intended to show that foolish and wicked men frequently acquire this royal power and title and then after a season of wanton insolence come to a most shameful and wretched end? [69] And so, when the fellow is freed from his chains, the chances are, if he is a fool and ignorant of the significance of the procedure, that he feels glad and congratulates himself on what is taking place; but if he understands, he probably breaks out into wailing and refuses to go along without protesting, but would rather remain in fetters just as he was. [70] Therefore, O perverse man, do not attempt to be king before you have attained to wisdom. And in the meantime,” he added, “it is better not to give orders to others but to live in solitude, clothed in a sheepskin.”

  “You,” he objected, “do you bid me, Alexander, of the stock of Heracles, to don a sheepskin — me, the leader of the Greeks and king of the Macedonians?” [71] “Surely,” he replied, “just as your ancestor did.” “What ancestor?” he asked. “Archelaus. Was not Archelaus a goatherd and did he not come into Macedonia driving goats? Now do you think he did this clad in purple rather than in a sheepskin?” And Alexander calmed down, laughed, and said, “Do you refer to the story about the oracle, Diogenes?” [72] The other puckered his face and said, “Oracle indeed! All I know is that Archelaus was a goatherd. But if you will drop your conceit and your present occupations, you will be a king, not in word maybe, but in reality; and you will prevail over all women as well as all men, as did Heracles, whom you claim as an ancestor of yours.” [73] Alexander said, “Women indeed! Or am I to understand that you refer to the Amazons?” “Nay, it was no hard matter to overcome them,” he replied. “I refer to women of another kind, who are extremely dangerous and savage. Have you not heard the Libyan myth?” And the king replied that he had not. [74] Then Diogenes told it to him with zest and charm, because he wanted to put him in a good humour, just as nurses, after giving the children a whipping, tell them a story to comfort and please them.

  [75] “Be assured,” he continued, “that you will never be king until you have propitiated your attendant spirit and, by treating it as you should, have made it commanding, free-spirited and kingly, instead of, as in your present state, slavish, illiberal, and vicious.” [76] Then was Alexander amazed at the courage and fearlessness of the man; yet deeming him to have greater knowledge than other men, he urgently besought him not to say him nay but to explain what his attendant spirit was and how he must propitiate it. For he assumed that he would hear some deity’s name and of certain sacrifices or purifications that he would have to perform. [77] So when Diogenes perceived that he was greatly excited and quite keyed up in mind with expectancy, he toyed with him and pulled him about in the hope that somehow he might be moved from his pride and thirst for glory and be able to sober up a little. [78] For he noticed that at one moment he was delighted, and at another grieved, at the same thing, and that his soul was as unsettled as the weather at the solstices when both rain and sunshine come from the very same cloud. He realized, too, that Alexander despised the way in which he argued with him, due to the fact that the prince had never heard a real master of discourse but admired the style of the sophists, as being lofty and distinguished. [79] So wishing to win his favour and at the same time to show that he was quite able, whenever he chose, to make his discourse step out like a well-trained and tractable horse, he spoke to him as follows about attendant spirits, showing that the good and the bad spirits that bring happiness and misery are not outside the man, [80] and that each one’s intelligence — this and nothing more — is the guiding spirit of its owner, that the wise and good man’s spirit is good, the evil man’s evil, and likewise the free man’s is free, the slave’s slavish, the kingly and high-minded man’s kingly, the abject and base man’s abject. [81] “However, not to provoke a tedious discussion,” he continued, “by taking up each separate point, I shall mention the commonest and most noticeable spirits by which everybody, generally speaking, is actuated — tyrants and private citizens, rich and poor, whole nations and cities.” Thereupon he let out all his sails and delivered the following discourse with great loftiness and courage.

  [82] “Many, thou son of Philip, are the vices and corrupting influences that in all circumstances beget wretched man, and they are well-nigh more numerous than tongue can tell. For in truth, as the poet says,

  “No word is there so fraught with fear to speak,

  Nor sorrow, nor calamity god-sent,

  But mortal man might bear the weight thereof.”

  [83] “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. [84] 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.

  [85] “Therefore, come, let us imitate clever artists. They put the impress of their thought and art upon practically everything, representing not only the various gods in human forms but everything else as well. Sometimes they paint rivers in the likeness of men and springs in certain feminine shapes, yes, and islands and cities and well-nigh everything else, like Homer, who boldly represented the Scamander as speaking beneath his flood, [86] and though they cannot give speech to their figures, nevertheless do give them forms and symbols appropriate to their nature, as, for example, their river gods recline, usually naked, and wear long flowing beards and on their heads crowns of tamarisk or rushes. [87] Let us then show ourselves to be no whit worse or less competent in the field of discourse than they in their several arts as we mould and depict the characters of the three spirits of the three lives, therein displaying an accomplishment the reverse of and complementary to the skill and prophetic power of the physiognomists, as they call them. [88] These men can determine and announce a man’s character from his shape and appearance; while we propose to draw from a man’s habits and acts, a type and shape that will match the physiognomist’s work — that is, if we shall succeed in getting hold rather of the average and lower types. [89] Since our purpose is to show the absurdity existing in human lives, there is no impropriety or objection to our being seen imitating poets or artists or, if need be, priests of purification and to our striving to furnish illustrations and examples from every source, in the hope of being able to win souls from evil, delusion, and wicked desires and to lead them to love virtue and to long for a bett
er life; [90] or else we might follow the practice of some of those who deal with initiations and rites of purification, who appease the wrath of Hecate and undertake to make a person sound, and then before the cleansing process, as I understand, set forth and point to the many and various visions that, as they claim, the goddess sends when angry.

  [91] “Well, then, the avaricious spirit craves gold, silver, lands, cattle, blocks of houses, and every kind of possession. Would it not be represented by a good artist as downcast and gloomy of appearance, humble and mean of dress — aye, as squalid and ragged, loving neither children nor parents nor native land, and recognizing no kinship but that of money, and considering the gods as nothing more than that which reveals to him many vast treasures or the deaths of certain kinsfolk and connections from whom he might inherit, regarding our holy festivals as sheer loss and useless expense, never laughing or smiling, [92] eyeing all with suspicion and thinking them dangerous, distrusting everybody, having a rapacious look, ever twitching his fingers as he computes his own property, I take it, or that of someone else — a spirit not only without appreciation or capacity for any other thing, but scoffing at education and literature except when they have to do with estimates and contracts, the still blinder lover of wealth, which is rightly described and portrayed as blind; [93] mad about every kind of possession and thinking that nothing should be thrown away; unlike the magnetic stone, which they say attracts iron to itself, but amassing copper and lead as well, yes, even sand and rock if anyone gives them, and everywhere and in almost every case regarding possession as more profitable and better than non-possession. He is most frantic and eager, however, to get money, simply because success here is quickest and cheapest, since money goes on piling up day and night and outstrips, I ween, the circuits of the moon. [94] He recks naught of dislike, hate, and curses and, besides, holds that while other kinds of possessions may be pretty baubles wherewith to amuse oneself, money, to put it succinctly, is the very essence of wealth. [95] This, therefore, is what he seeks and pursues from any and every source, never concerning himself at all to ask whether it is acquired by shameful or by unjust means, except insofar as, observing the punishments meted out to footpads, he lets cowardice get the better of him and becomes cautious. For he has the soul of a worthless cur, that snatches up things when it expects not to be noticed, and looks on other morsels with longing eyes but keeps away from them, though reluctantly, because the guards are by. [96] So let him be a man insignificant in appearance, servile, unsleeping, never smiling, ever quarrelling and fighting with someone, very much like a pander, who in garb as well as in character is shameless and niggardly, dressed in a coloured mantle, the finery of one of his harlots. [97] A foul and loathsome spirit is this, for he brings every possible insult and shame upon his own friends and comrades, or, rather, his slaves and underlings, whether he find them in the garb of private citizens or in that of royalty. [98] Or is it not plain to see that many who are called kings are only traders, tax-gatherers, and keepers of brothels? Shall we assert that Dromon and Sarambus, because they keep shops in Athens and are called shopkeepers by the Athenians, come fairly by the name, but that the elder Darius, who kept a shop in Babylon and in Susa, and whom the Persians still to this day call a shopkeeper, has not deserved this name? [99] Moreover, there is one peculiarity about this spirit, not shared by the others: although he sometimes rules and masters the soul, yet sometimes he seems to be compliant, the reason being that wealth is the handmaid and the willing ministrant to every appetite and interest. [100] I, however, am now speaking of the spirit that takes the lead himself and dominates the faculties of his unhappy possessor; he has neither pleasure nor glory as the motive for the acquisition of wealth, and does not intend to spend or to use what he has gotten together, but keeps his wealth out of circulation and useless, actually locked up in secret and sunless vaults.

  [101] “So far so good. The second man and the attendant spirit of that man is the one which proclaims the orgies of Pleasure and admires and honours this goddess, a truly feminine being. He is of many hues and shapes, insatiable as to things that tickle nostril and palate, and further, methinks, as to all that pleases the eye, and all that affords any pleasure to the ear, as to all things that are soothing and agreeable to the touch, such as warm baths taken daily, or rather, twice a day, anointings that are not for the relief of weariness [102] and, besides, the wearing of soft sweeping robes, bolstered repose, and attentive service for every appetite and desire. He is passionately devoted to all these things, but especially and most unrestrainedly to the poignant and burning madness of sexual indulgence, through intercourse both with females and with males, and through still other unspeakable and nameless obscenities; after all such indiscriminately he rushes and also leads others, abjuring no form of lust and leaving none untried.

  [103] “At present, it should be explained, we are treating as one this spirit which is afflicted with all these maladies and excesses of the soul; for we do not want to assemble a huge gallery of lecherous, gluttonous, and bibulous spirits and others unnumbered, but to treat as simply one that spirit which is incontinent and enslaved to pleasure, [104] which — if only there is from some source an inflow of inexhaustible means, whether from royal coffers or from great private estate — wallows in a deep and boundless slough of debauchery until old age comes; failing such resources, the man speedily squanders the fortune he began with, or is reduced to impotent and licentious penury, and in deprivation combined with craving falls terribly short of his desires. [105] And, further, this spirit has sometimes changed those possessed by it to the life and the garb of women, just as the myths relate of those who transformed human beings into birds or beasts, if they were unfortunate enough to have become enslaved to an appetite of such a nature.

  “But here again we find a contrast in our examples. [106] There is, first in this class, the weak and unventuresome spirit, which easily leads men into effeminate vices and other kinds of misconduct which involve loss and disgrace, but, where certain indulgences are followed by punishments that inflict upon the culprit death or imprisonment or heavy fines, altogether avoids inciting the victim to those extremes. [107] There is, however, the more aggressive and audacious spirit, which compels its victim to overleap absolutely all bounds, both human and divine. Now while the weak and unventuresome spirit no sooner gets involved than he acknowledges his shameful weakness by taking up no manly occupation, but leaving social and civic activities to those who have lived a better life, [108] the bold and impetuous spirit, after enduring many a rebuff and humiliation, by a sudden turn of fortune’s wheel, as they say, emerged as a general or as a popular leader with shrill and piercing voice, and, like actors on the stage, discards his feminine attire for the time being and then, having seized that of a general or an orator, stalks about as a blackmailer and an object of terror, looking all the world in the eye.

  [109] “Now does a manly and grave appearance befit such a spirit, or rather a weak and effeminate one? Therefore we shall dress him up in his proper attire, not in the brave and awe-inspiring clothes which he often assumes when playing a part. [110] So, by heavens, let him step forth luxurious, breathing of myrrh and wine, in a saffron robe, with much inordinate laughter, resembling a drunken reveller in a wanton midday riot and wearing faded garlands on his head and about his neck, reeling in his gait, dancing and singing an effeminate and tuneless song. Let him be led by brazen, dissolute women, [111] known as certain of the sensual lusts, each pulling him her own way, and he rebuffs none of them nor says her nay, but follows readily and eagerly enough. [112] And let them, with a great din of cymbals and flutes, come eagerly forth, escorting the frenzied fellow. And from the midst of the women let him utter shriller and more passionate cries than they; he is pale and effeminate in appearance, unacquainted with heaven’s air or honest toil, lets his head droop, and leers lasciviously, with his watery eyes ever studying his fleshy self, but heedless of the soul and her mandates. [113] Whether a statuary or a pain
ter compelled to represent this man, he could create no better likeness of him than that of the Syrian king, who spent his life in his harem with eunuchs and concubines without ever a sight of army or war or assembly at all. [114] Let his steps also be guided by Delusion, a very beautiful and enticing maid, decked out in harlot’s finery, smiling and promising a wealth of good things and making him believe that she is leading him to the very embrace of happiness, till unexpectedly she drops him into the pit, into a morass of foul mud, and then leaves him to flounder about in his garlands and saffron robe. [115] In servitude to such a tyrant and suffering such tribulation those souls wander through life which, craven and impotent in the face of hardships, enslaved to pleasure, pleasure-loving, and carnally-minded, go on living a disgraceful and reprehensible life, not from choice, the because they have drifted into it.