Chapter 4: Gnomai, from "Popular Morality in the Early Roman Empire
by Teresa Morgan
© Teresa Morgan 2007
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Ai-Khanoum inscription
Stone block with a portion of the Delphic Maxims. Ai-Khanoum, Afghanistan, 2nd century BCE
In the ruins of the Hellenistic city of Ai-Khanoum (former Greco-Bactrian kingdom, and modern Afghanistan), on a Herõon (funerary monument) identified in Greek as the tomb of Kineas (also described as the oikistes (founder) of the Greek settlement) and dated to 300-250 BCE, an inscription has been found describing part of the Delphic maxims (maxims 143 to 147):"Païs ôn kosmios ginou (As children, learn good manners)
hèbôn enkratès, (as young men, learn to control the passions)
mesos dikaios (in middle age, be just)
presbutès euboulos (in old age, give good advice)
teleutôn alupos. (then die, without regret.)"
The precepts were placed by a Greek named Clearchos, who may or may not have been Clearchus of Soli the disciple of Aristotle, who, according to the same inscription, had copied them from Delphi:"These wise commandments of men of old
- Words of well-known thinkers - stand dedicated
In the most holy Pythian shrine
From there Klearchos, having copied them carefully, set them up, shining from afar, in the sanctuary of Kineas"
-- Delphic maxims, by Wikipedia
Ai-Khanoum (Aï Khānum, also Ay Khanum, lit. “Lady Moon” in Uzbek), possibly the historical Alexandria on the Oxus, possibly later named Eucratidia, was one of the primary cities of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom from circa 280 BCE, and of the Indo-Greek kings when they ruled both in Bactria and northwestern India, from the time of Demetrius I (200-190 BCE) [200-180] to the time of Eucratides (170–145 BCE). Previous scholars have argued that Ai Khanoum was founded in the late 4th century BC, following the conquests of Alexander the Great. Recent analysis now strongly suggests that the city was founded c. 280 BC by the Seleucid emperor Antiochus I Soter [292-281 BC]. The city is located in Takhar Province, northern Afghanistan, at the confluence of the Panj River and the Kokcha River, both tributaries of the Amu Darya, historically known as the Oxus. It is on the lower of two major sets of routes (lowland and highland) which connect Western Asia to the Khyber Pass which gives road access to South Asia.
Ai-Khanoum was one of the focal points of Hellenism in the East for nearly two centuries until its annihilation by nomadic invaders around 145 BCE about the time of the death of Eucratides I.
On a hunting trip in the 1960s, the Afghan Khan Gholam Serwar Nasher discovered ancient artifacts of Ai Khanom and invited Princeton archaeologist Daniel Schlumberger with his team to examine Ai-Khanoum. It was soon found to be the historical Alexandria on the Oxus, also possibly later named Arukratiya or Eucratidia, one of the primary cities of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom. Some of those artifacts were displayed in Europe and USA museums in 2004. The site was subsequently excavated through archaeological work by a French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan (DAFA) mission under Paul Bernard [fr] between 1964 and 1978, as well as Soviet scientists. The work had to be abandoned with the onset of the Soviet–Afghan War, during which the site was looted and used as a battleground, leaving very little of the original material. In 2013, the film-maker David Adams produced a six-part documentary mini-series about the ancient city entitled Alexander's Lost World.
Ai-Khanoum was located at the extreme east of Bactria, at the doorstep of the Maurya Empire in India.
The choice of this site for the foundation of a city was probably guided by several factors. The region, irrigated by the Oxus, had a rich agricultural potential. Mineral resources were abundant in the back country towards the Hindu Kush, especially the famous so-called "rubies" (actually, spinel) from Badakshan, and gold. Its location at the junction between Bactrian territory and nomad territories to the north, ultimately allowed access to commerce with the Chinese empire. Lastly, Ai-Khanoum was located at the very doorstep of Ancient India, allowing it to interact directly with the Indian subcontinent.
Numerous artefacts and structures were found, pointing to a high Hellenistic culture, combined with Eastern influences. "It has all the hallmarks of a Hellenistic city, with a Greek theatre, gymnasium and some Greek houses with colonnaded courtyards". Overall, Aï-Khanoum was an extremely important Greek city (1.5 sq kilometer), characteristic of the Seleucid Empire and then the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom....
Indian Emperor Ashoka addressed the Greeks of the region circa 258 BC in the Kandahar Edict of Ashoka, a bilingual inscription in Greek and Aramaic. Kabul Museum.
The findings are of considerable importance, as no remains of the Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek civilizations had been uncovered in the East (beyond the abundant coinage) until this discovery, which led some to speak of a "Bactrian mirage."
Ai-Khanoum was a center of Hellenistic culture at the doorstep of India, and there was a strong reciprocal awareness between the two areas. A few years after the foundation of the city, around 258 BC, the Indian Emperor Ashoka was carving a rock inscription in Greek and Aramaic addressed to the Greeks in the region, the Kandahar Edict of Ashoka, in the nearby city of Kandahar.
-- Ai-Khanoum, by Wikipedia
The Greeks who caused Bactria to revolt grew so powerful on account of the fertility of the country that they became masters, not only of Ariana, but also of India, as Apollodorus of Artemita says: and more tribes were subdued by them than by Alexander... Their cities were Bactra (also called Zariaspa, through which flows a river bearing the same name and emptying into the Oxus), and Darapsa, and several others.
— Strabo Geography 11.11.1
While Chandragupta Maurya's multiethnic, polyglot, expansionist kingdom certainly resembled the Seleucid state in outline and probably generated parallel mechanisms of territorial control, Megasthenes' ethnography went beyond this to emphasize consonance with the Seleucid world: certain of India's characteristics, appearing for the first time in ethnography, resemble Seleucid state structures too closely to be anything but observations or fabrications of similarity. The strongest case is the existence of autonomous, democratically governed cities within Megasthenes' Indian kingdom. The coexistence of independent and dependent cities within the same realm is one of the most striking characteristics of the Seleucid empire; it is unattested for the Mauryan kingdom. Megasthenes seems to have deliberately constructed a parallel system of irregular political sovereignty to better support the analogy between the two states. Other parallels include royal land ownership, the capital-on-the-river, the construction of roads and milestones, and various duties of the monarch.
-- Chapter 1: India – Diplomacy and Ethnography at the Mauryan Empire, Excerpt from "The Land of the Elephant Kings: Space, Territory, and Ideology in the Seleucid Empire", by Paul J. Kosmin
Chapter 4
Gnomai
Life is not a highway strewn with flowers. -- English popular song
In English, the term ‘gnomic saying’ has a wide scope, including proverbs, riddles, mottoes, legal axioms and even the epimythia of fables.1 Gnome in Greek and sententia in Latin are used of both proverbs and moralizing quotations, but for clarity, I am restricting them to the second group.2 The boundary, as we have seen, is occasionally hazy, as poets give memorable form to common sentiments or attributable quotations become proverbial. As usual, when in doubt I follow the sources’ own view of whether a particular saying is popular and anonymous (i.e. proverbial) or has a known origin. The most famous example of a borderline case in this chapter is the Sayings of the Seven Sages. These, which should probably, properly, be regarded as anonymous and proverbial, overlap both with the Delphic maxims and with some proverbs, but they were so generally attributed to the Sages in antiquity that it seems perverse not to count them as gnomai.3
Despite overlapping vocabulary and some borderline cases, Greek and Latin speakers could and did distinguish between quotations and anonymous proverbs, and the overlap of identical material between anthologies of proverbs and gnomic sayings is tiny (a fraction of a percentage point).4 The definition of a gnome was of particular interest to rhetoricians. Hermogenes of Tarsus offers this in his second-century Progymnasmata:1
Gnome is a summary statement, in universal terms, dissuading or exhorting in regard to something, or making clear what a particular thing is. Dissuading, as in the following (Il. 2.24): ‘A man who is a counsellor should not sleep throughout the night’; exhorting, as in the following (Theognis 175): ‘One fleeing poverty, Cyrnis, must throw himself/Into the yawning sea and down steep crags.’ Or it does neither of these things but explains the nature of something; for example (Demosthenes 1.23): ‘Undeserved success is for the unintelligent the beginning of thinking badly.’5
Theon, writing his Progymnasmata a century earlier, does not give gnomai a section to themselves, but treats them alongside chreiai, distinguishing the two as follows:
A chreia is a brief saying or action indicating shrewdness, attributed to some specified person or analogy of a person, and gnome and apomnemoneuma (reminiscence) are connected with it. Every brief gnome attributed to a person creates a chreia. A reminiscence is an action or a saying useful for life. The gnome, however, differs from the chreia in four ways; the chreia is always attributed to a person, the gnome not always; the chreia sometimes states a universal, sometimes a particular, the gnome only a universal; furthermore, sometimes the chreia is a pleasantry not useful for life, the gnome is always about something; fourth, the chreia is an action or a saying, the gnome only a saying.6
Function is as important as form for these authors when discussing the gnome (and for that matter the chreia, reminiscence and fable), and the function of a gnome is explicitly ethical: it is useful; it tells you something about the nature of the world, or about what to do or not to do. This view is expressed as a commonplace in other authors. Dio Chrysostom, speaking on how to prepare oneself for public speaking, urges his listeners to read Euripides and Menander; among the virtues of Euripides is that he scatters his plays with gnomai which are useful for all occasions.7 For Plutarch, no-one is more instructive than Menander, while Quintilian, whose analysis of the sententia runs to thirty-five paragraphs, a formidable range of sub-types and an exhaustive discussion of when it is and is not appropriate to use them, calls sententiae lumina, lights which illuminate the nature of things or persons.8 Gnomai or sententiae are meant to be taken seriously, heard, read, marked, learned and inwardly digested, and then put to use.9
From the first and second centuries, well over a thousand gnomic sayings survive in anthologies, in manuscript or on papyrus, while hundreds more are embedded in almost every kind of literature. From Menander, the single most popular source of gnomai in either language, no fewer than 866 lines in Greek (to say nothing of Latin versions) have been collected, many of which are attested several times; many of these are collected in anthologies but most are embedded in other works of literature.10 Such embedded gnomai are often produced with something of a fanfare, complete with their source. So, for instance, Seneca the Younger, discoursing on anger, says, ‘What of the fact that fear always rebounds on its authors and that no-one who is feared is safe himself? That line of Laberius may occur to you at this point, the one which (spoken in the theatre in the middle of a civil war) captured the whole populace as if the voice of public feeling itself had spoken: “The one whom many fear must fear many.”’11 On other occasions, a gnome is introduced but the audience is left to supply the author. So Paul of Tarsus, in The Acts of the Apostles, woos the Athenians with their shared knowledge of Aratus: ‘From one man, [God] made every race of men to inhabit the whole face of the earth, and he set out when and where they would live, so that they would seek God and perhaps grope for him and find him -– though he is not far from any of us. For “in him we live and move and exist”; as some of your poets have said, “for we are also his offspring”.’12 Paul, in his own writings, is capable of an even subtler use of the gnome, as when he slips a fragment of Menander’s Thaıs into his advice to the Christians of Corinth, ‘Do not stray: “Bad company destroys good morals.”’13
Most quotations in literary works are not moralistic, and of those that are, most are grammatically incomplete -– a few words or a clause from a well-known passage -– or they are simply alluded to or invoked in passing, with an image or a familiar turn of phrase. These I have excluded from the analysis, on the grounds (parallel to those on which I excluded some proverbial phrases from Chapter Two) that a gnome proper is a grammatically complete sentence as well as a complete thought. Quotations of more than two lines (which are much rarer) I have included if they express a single, coherent moralizing idea, like the paradigmatic monostichs and distichs.9 This five-line quotation from Euripides in Aulus Gellius’ Attic Nights, for instance, qualifies: ‘What more do mortals need than these two things, the fruits of Demeter and the cool water of the spring, which are to hand and exist to feed us? All this does not satisfy us, but we hunt for other ways of eating in luxury.’14
Within anthologies, gnomai are easier to identify but often harder to date. Two important Latin collections, which have survived in manuscript and have some claim to have existed in the first or second century, are a case in point. The Dicta Catonis form a collection of sayings, some very brief and apparently modelled on the Sayings of the Seven Sages, some monostichs or distichs in hexameter verse, which was widely copied in late antiquity under the name of Cato the Elder. Some of these sayings were known in the first and second centuries,15 and a collection was in existence by the fourth. How far back we can trace them is harder to tell. Cato, consul and censor in the second century and a byword for moral probity since at least the first century BCE, was an obvious figure to whom to attach gnomai. (Plutarch, in his Life, attributes many more to him, some of which are translations of Menander monostichs; Seneca too quotes a ‘saying of Cato’ which does not appear in the distichs.16 ) There is no indication, however, that he wrote verse on a scale to produce this many gnomic quotations (though he left a number of prose works). There is, moreover, a suspicious absence of quotations from the Dicta in authors of the first and second centuries. Worse still, whatever the collection’s original form, it is clear that the versions which have come down to us are heavily Christianized. For all these reasons, I doubt we can convincingly identify any part of the Dicta Catonis as a collection in circulation in the first and second centuries, so I have not included it here.17
We are on firmer ground with the collection of Publilius Syrus. Publilius came to Rome in the mid-first century BCE as a slave.18 At some point he was freed and made his reputation writing Latin mimes which, like Greek and Latin comedy, periodically made use of a highly gnomic style. There is good evidence that he was known, quoted and admired in the first and second centuries CE. Seneca the Elder comments on his gift for apt expression; Petronius imitates him, and Gellius quotes a number of his sententiae.19 In the fourth century, Jerome learned his maxims.20 Like the Dicta Catonis, Publilius’ sayings were adapted for Christian audiences, prose material was added and the collection circulated in the Middle Ages in diverse forms. Over 700 sententiae, however, have been identified as original, and it seems plausible that they were in circulation in the first and second centuries CE.21
Gnomic anthologies in Greek present slightly different problems. Here we do have a large number of fragmentary texts, on papyrus, clearly written under the early Roman Empire, some in professional literary hands, while others are scholarly compilations or school texts. In this case, however, I have allowed myself to stray beyond my usual chronological bounds and include material which may date to as late as the fourth century. This is partly because it is not always easy to date papyri to one century, especially in literary hands, and many of the texts I shall be using are dated to, for instance, the second or third century, occasionally even the second, third or fourth. It is also partly because the accidents of survival and excavation mean that notoriously few papyri of any kind survive from the first century CE, and many of the best-preserved gnomic anthologies are possibly or certainly later than the second. Many date from even later than the fourth, and a few from earlier, but one can defend the inclusion of material from the first to the fourth centuries in a way in which one might not want to defend earlier or later material.
If we consider the whole range of literature surviving on papyrus during the Graeco-Roman period, we notice that across Egypt, a much wider range of literature seems to have been read under the Ptolemies than under the Romans. By the second century CE (outside one or two pockets of intense scholarly activity), a relatively narrow range of authors and texts survive in any numbers.22 Reading habits then seem to have been relatively stable until the fourth century, when the number and range of Greek and Latin secular literature begin to fall again (while Christian, especially biblical, material rises sharply). To include gnomic anthologies from the Ptolemaic period, therefore, in this analysis would be to include material which might well have gone out of circulation by the early Empire. To include collections from later than the fourth century would be to give too much statistical weight to their contents and potentially to distort the earlier picture. (One sixth- or seventh-century anthology, for instance, includes many gnomai about death (reflecting perhaps a Christian influence), which makes it rather different from earlier collections.23 To include it in the analysis would make death look a much more important topic in the early Empire than other collections suggest.) We can fortify first- and second-century material with texts from the third and fourth centuries, however, without serious danger of distorting the picture they create.
From the first to the fourth centuries, some ninety-five more or less readable texts of gnomic anthologies survive, together with a handful too fragmentary to yield more than odd words. Between them, they contain around 300 decipherable gnomic sayings. Most are not attributed in the papyri as we have them (though we rarely have the beginning or end of a text, where attributions most often occur). Around half, however, can be firmly attributed to an author and usually a work. The largest number come from Menander (or other new comic poets, whose gnomai tended to be dubbed ‘Menandrean’). The most popular prose works are ps.-Isocrates’ Ad Demonicum, Ad Nicoclem or Nicocles. Five texts can be firmly attributed to Euripides. Three survive from Plutarch’s Sympotic Problems and one each from (or attributed to) Hesiod, Philemon, Hermarchus, Moschion, Antiphon, Potamon, Aristotle, Aristippus, Diphilus, Pythagoras, Favorinus, Antisthenes, Chares, Chaeremon and Diogenes the Cynic – as eclectic a range of authors as was read anywhere in Egypt at the time. Between them, they are widely distributed across the province, showing that gnomic material was, geographically at least, more widely spread than any literature other than Homer in the Roman period.
It is common now -– when fragments of gnomologies survive only on papyrus, in the monumental, but more admired than studied compilation of Stobaeus, in the little-read late-antique manuscripts collected by Boissonade,24 in what are classified as minor Latin poets or in Arabic and modern European translations -– to underestimate their importance in the Hellenistic and especially the Roman world. To judge by the number of surviving papyrus fragments, however, the number of mediaeval manuscripts of some collections and the frequency with which certain gnomai were quoted by other authors, gnomai and gnomic collections were among the most widely familiar literary material in the Roman world – quite likely, after Homer (and possibly, in the west, Virgil), the most familiar material.25 Gnomai were among the first texts people read and copied when learning to read and write, so everyone with even the most basic level of literacy read some. Professional scribes made fair copies of them for wealthy patrons, and scholars copied them in informal hands. Where they were read, no doubt they were also quoted and so spread through parts, at least, of the non-literate population.26 Gnomai were familiar to anyone who read or had contact with someone who read. They helped to form the mindset of Greek and Latin speakers across the Empire, oiled the wheels of their thinking and coloured and vitalized their speech.
Map of the Ethical Landscape
1. Wealth
Two subjects individually form the two largest groups of gnomic sayings, and together dominate the landscape: wealth, and relations between rich and poor, and, often linked with them in individual gnomai, good and bad social relations in general. No text sets out its views more baldly than the first surviving quotation on a papyrus of the second or early third century published by Bartoletti.27 As we have it, the papyrus begins with a series of gnomai about wealth (to plouton), before moving on to arete (virtue), tyche and evil speech. The first column of fragment A reads: ‘Of Euripides. “I know and have tested well how all men love having; for no-one pursues what does not provide sustenance, but what provides wealth and wherewithal; the man who lacks wealth would do well to die.”’ Wealth is both necessary and, it seems, universally desired by human beings. ‘Money rules the world,’ says Publilius.28 ‘All animals fill themselves with food, but the race of men is insatiable of profit (kerdos).’29 An ostrakon from Narmouthis puts it even more bluntly in one of a series of Delphic-style axioms: ‘Seek wealth.’30 ‘Gold, the most beautiful thing that comes to men,’ rhapsodizes Lucian in the words of Euripides, and, ‘Water is best, but gold outshines proud wealth like a blazing fire at night.’31
Bartoletti’s third quotation reads, ‘Of Euripides. “This man who sets up for us altars of the gods in heaven and beautiful images with cunning blows of life-making skill, neglects one thing, it seems to me: he has not set up an altar nor a garland to the greatest and highest of gods, Wealth.”’ This reinforces the idea that human beings value wealth above everything else, even to the point of worshipping it. The speaker is presumably speaking sardonically, and the idea that wealth is something to be worshipped does not come up elsewhere in gnomai, but it is paralleled in the many cults of wealth (Ploutos and Ops) in Greek and Roman cities.
The wealth one seeks is not necessarily vast. Papyrus Bouriant 1 records, ‘I say that of all possessions, the best is wealth’ and ‘O greatest of all benefits, money’, but also, ‘Life without a livelihood is no life,’32 which suggests that wealth may be only what is needed to support life. When you have money, hang on to it: ‘When you buy what you don’t have, make sure you don’t have to sell what you do.’33 ‘Buy not what you need, but what you must have,’ says Seneca, quoting the Elder Cato.34 (This, though, is the ostentatious frugality of the rich. Publilius surely speaks for poorer members of society when he says roundly that, ‘Frugality is a euphemism for misery.’35 )
The second quotation in Bartoletti’s papyrus reads, ‘Of Hesiod. “Virtue and kydos go with wealth.”’ It is not hard to imagine how kudos goes with wealth. It is more striking that virtue is seen to go with it.36 We need not assume that wealth is being said to make people virtuous (in other gnomai, and elsewhere in wisdom literature, it clearly does not): it may be that, as in the third-century riddle, both wealth and virtue are seen to be the business of life.37 Equally, the compiler may mean that a rich man ought to be virtuous in order to use his wealth well. Parallels for that thought can be found, for instance, in the many gnomai of ps.-Isocrates’ Ad Demonicum.38 Or the quotation may mean that it is hard to be virtuous when one is poor, relying on the close association in Greek (and Latin) between virtue, good fortune and happiness.39
Several quotations survive on the topic, ‘If you are lazy [sometimes adding, when you are rich], you will become poor.’40 ‘Skills [or ‘crafts’] do not age well unless the man who practises them is a lover of money,’ says Maximus of Tyre, quoting Menander.41 On a similar theme, a third-century riddle reads, ‘What harms one’s wealth? Wasting of means,’42 and perhaps the same idea lies behind the one-word command: Philoponei, ‘love work’, which appears, among other places, in several school texts.43 One way at least of wasting one’s means is indicated in an ostrakon from Narmouthis, which commands tersely: ‘Flee loans.’44 ‘Debt is bitter slavery for the free man.’45 (Gnomai also recognize, though, that one may win or lose wealth not through one’s own fault, but through the designs, for instance, of tyche.46 ) Another quotation in Bartoletti’s papyrus is a fragment of Menander: ‘It is the mark of a wise man (phronountos) to bear loss [or punishment] rightly; of a rich wise man (ploutountos eu phronountos) not [to speak his business?].’
Criticism of unjust gain runs strongly through these texts. It appears in a rather garbled set of Menander monostichs from the first century (MPER 3.25). Another very gappy papyrus of the second century presents us tantalizingly with the phrases, taken from a series of authors, ‘. . . almost the head of evil . . . love of silver (philarguria) . . . evil profits . . . a greater evil for men . . . love of silver . . .’.47 P. Oxy. 3004 threatens those who pursue unjust gain with future pain (l. 10), and P. Bour. 1 commands the reader, ‘Flee the wicked habit and evil profit.’ ‘Better to lose your last as than make a dishonest profit,’ says Publilius, idealistically. ‘Gain with a bad reputation counts as loss.’48
Publilius Syrus has a particular dislike of misers and those greedy for wealth. ‘The miser is the cause of his own misery.’ ‘The miser lacks what he has as much as what he lacks.’49 ‘The poor lack much; the greedy man lacks anything.’50 He is suspicious of rich men’s heirs, especially if they show grief: ‘There’s a smile under the mask of a weeping heir.’51 Quintilian quotes Virgil in a similar vein: ‘To what will you not drive mortal hearts, cursed rumour of gold?’52 With Publilius’ interest in the abuse of wealth goes a shrewd grasp of economics: ‘What many people want is most dangerous to be looking after.’ Also of the pressures that unequal wealth puts on social relations: ‘A debtor does not love his creditor’s threshold.’53
Several texts offer a version of the sentiment, ‘Remember, being rich, to do good to the poor,’54 and this takes us to the theme of social relations in the context of wealth. Publilius is much interested in gift-giving and says several times that it is good to give, to have pity on those in need and to give without moralizing about it. The generous even invent reasons for making gifts.55 He recommends those in need to look to people with a record of generosity.56 ‘Your gift will be twice as pleasing if you offer it spontaneously.’57 Some care is needed, however: ‘If you keep giving, when you refuse you encourage someone to steal’ (though if you do it kindly, a refusal can almost count as a kindness itself).58 Not to be able to help is frustrating and to have sometimes to hurt people when you would like to help them, is wretched.59
On this subject, no author was half so popular as ps.-Isocrates. Among his maxims, many of which appear in several different fragments or anthologies, we find,
Desire not to acquire too many good things, but to enjoy what you have in a measured manner. Look down on those who pursue wealth but cannot make use of what they have: they are like a man who buys himself a fine horse but cannot ride. Try to make money something you use as well as something you own . . . value your possessions for two reasons, because it means you can afford a large loss, and because it enables you to help a friend in need.60
The enduring popularity of quotations from Ad Demonicum, Ad Nicoclem and Nicocles raises the interesting question what readers were expected to learn from gnomic anthologies, given that no-one reading such an anthology in an upstate Egyptian town or village was likely ever to find himself (let alone herself ) in the position of an Isocratean ruler. We shall return to this question in Chapter Six, but it seems evident that the author’s picture of the intimate relationship between wealth and social relations struck a chord with a wider readership. Ps.-Isocrates has no doubts about the importance of wealth – he assumes that his audience has much more than most readers of papyri can have dreamed of – but he is equally certain that it cannot create good social relationships on its own. It can be enjoyable; it can be usefully deployed; it can be a bargaining tool; of itself it brings a certain amount of power and prominence. But it has to be used, and used well, to be enjoyed; it has little to be said for it in itself, and other things remain more important: power, reputation, security. All these are ideas which make sense even if one is not among the wealthiest in society. Security, indeed, could be said to be the overriding concern of almost all ethical material – the theme behind every other theme. One thing on which gnomic texts up and down the Roman social scale could agree, is that it is hard ever to be as secure as one would like, in wealth, position, reputation, relationships or prospects.
In contrast to the large number of texts which discuss giving by the rich to the poor, one text gives some advice to the poor which would make it hard for the rich to patronize them: ‘When you are poor, do not associate with the rich, for you will seem to be flattering them.’61 No doubt another reason why the poor might be wary of associating with the rich is the fear that the rich might take what little they have, rather than giving generously of their wealth. ‘I hate to see the poor give to the rich,’ says Papyrus Bouriant, warningly.
2. Good social relations: the more and less powerful
The next group of gnomai focuses on relations between the more and less powerful. ‘Pursue glory and virtue . . .,’62 ‘Courage brings glory.’ ‘Fortune favours the brave,’ says Seneca the Younger, quoting Virgil.63 ‘Praise is the sweetest thing to hear,’ avers Pliny, quoting Xenophon.64 ‘A good reputation keeps its glory even in dark times.’ ‘A good reputation is a second patrimony.’65 ‘Honour shows off the honourable but shows up the dishonourable.’66 Honour, kudos, good reputation (doxa, kydos, gloria, bona fama) and bad make several more appearances in papyri, though most of them happen to be too fragmentary to contextualize.67 For ps.-Isocrates, doxa, along with wealth and friends, is what fortune gives great men,68 and although he does not use the word as often as one might expect, the whole thrust of his hortatory discourses is to teach his readers how to rule with doxa and arete. It is striking that two gnomai which can be read also connect glory with virtue (and in one case, with wealth as well). ‘Virtue and kudos go with wealth.’69 ‘Pursue glory and virtue, avoid blame.’70 Glory is a virtue of social prominence – one cannot be glorious and unknown – so it is not surprising that it goes with wealth. More interesting is the insistence that it goes with virtue. Ad Dem. 49 makes clear that it does not have to go with virtue – one can be glorious, as one can be rich, and a bad man. But these texts prefer that it should. It may have been some consolation to those who were not members of the elite, who nonetheless heard or read gnomai and aspired to their values, and who, if they could not make themselves glorious and rich, could at least try to be virtuous.
A text which seems to begin with a reference to Alexander the Great (perhaps attributing the sentiment to him) says, ‘Do nothing mean (tapeinos) or low-born (agenes) or disgraceful (adoxos) or weak (analkimos).’71 Alexander would also have sympathized with the answer to the riddle, ‘what makes good out of evil? Boldness. Force’, and with Publilius’ claim that ‘the noble mind does not accept an insult’.72 The only trouble with aristocratic virtues like these is that they can spill over into arrogance or recklessness: ‘The boast of pride soon turns to ignominy.’ ‘Hate recklessness.’73 ‘The greatest power is thrown away by being badly exercised.’74
Ps.-Isocrates’ perspective when advising Demonicus and Nicocles is frankly that of the powerful, and the advice he gives is a blend of the utilitarian and the philosophical. It places a high value on virtue. ‘Manage your affairs so that you are in a position of power, then lay off when you have a fair share, so that you may be seen to work for justice, not out of weakness, but from a sense of what is right.’75 ‘You must apply your mind, so that as far as you outstrip others in honour, so far you surpass them in the virtues.’76 ‘Nothing is as popular as goodness of heart,’ says Quintilian optimistically, quoting Cicero.77
Imitation is an important theme for ps.-Isocrates and society in general. We imitate what we admire, and admire what we imitate. ‘Believing that those who strive for reputation (doxa) and are eager for education should imitate the good and not the bad, I have sent you this treatise as a gift . . .’ ps.-Isocrates begins his letter to Demonicus.78 ‘Do not envy those whom I value most, but compete with them . . .’79 Conversely, what we do not approve of we should not imitate, as a third-century gnome from Oxyrhynchus tells us.80
By identifying good men and imitating them, says ps.-Isocrates, one can become like them and form friendships with them. His idea of imitation all takes place within the highest level of society, but his advice would work equally well for any man interested in improving his social status.
Good, powerful men, in many of these quotations, are those who succeed in pursuing glory, reputation, authority or virtue while keeping the poor and powerless on their side.81 ‘Everyone co-operates happily when worthy men rule.’ Sometimes keeping the less powerful on side means giving them something (other than money). ‘The man who practises clemency wins every time.’ ‘The man who yields to his people is not conquered, but conquers.’82 There are sound prudential reasons for this: ‘The highest place is safe for no-one unless he watches his step.’83 For their part, the less powerful are encouraged to trust their rulers: a third-century papyrus even advises: ‘Trust a ruler whether just or unjust.’84
Texts addressed to the less powerful are not homogeneous. Some are optimistic: ‘Cultivate those more powerful than you . . .’85 Publilius sees advantages even in servitude. ‘An inferior knows all his superior’s mistakes.’ ‘The clever slave has a share in power.’ ‘To do wrong for one’s masters counts as a virtue.’86 Others are resigned: ‘The ignorance of the powerful must be borne.’87 A number of quotations are less enthusiastic than we might expect about help given by the more powerful to the less. ‘The saved man is always ungracious (acharistos) by nature’ observes one text from Oxyrhynchus.88 Publilius too attests that being offered help can wound people’s pride, make them feel slavish and is no benefit when it is accompanied by fear.89
Some gnomai are pessimistic: ‘Injustice easily becomes powerful over the poor.’ ‘To die at another’s command is to die twice.’ ‘An inferior seeks what his superior is hiding, at his peril.’ ‘How painful is a wound you dare not complain of!’90 A few are not resigned: ‘A worthless man doing well is not to be borne.’91 One gnome can even advise, ‘Do not honour those in power, for it is unseemly.’92
If all else fails, the powerless can console themselves by practising contentment. ‘When the poor man starts to imitate the rich, he’s done for.’93 ‘What is wicked in life? Envy’.94 On the verso of a second-century school text from Tebtunis we find written out eleven times, ‘Do not be eager to be rich, lest envy cause you grief.’95 ‘Neither exult in wealth nor bemoan poverty.’96 The poor man has few enemies, and ‘The lowly have not far to fall,’ while ‘the higher they stand, the more easily fate hurts them’.97 One heavily reconstructed quotation seems to say that it is not a safe course of life to try to control many things: one should mind one’s own affairs and not other people’s.98 There are unexpected compensations for being unimportant. It is hard to imagine those at the top of society being encouraged to cowardice in any circumstances, but in one papyrus collection we find, ‘The man who flees will fight again.’99
3. Friendship
Perhaps the most significant way in which people protect themselves against the conflicts of wealth and power, or poverty and powerlessness, is by making friends (philoi, amici). We cannot do without friendship: ‘Seek philia,’ as one of the Delphic-style maxims tells us.100 ‘United we stand firm.’101 ‘Nothing distinguishes good and bad men so much as their friendships’ proclaims ps.-Isocrates.102 ‘Be pleasant to all but cultivate the best.’103
The Bartoletti papyrus with which I started the last section, later quotes from Euripides’ Phoenissae: ‘If the same thing seemed beautiful and wise to everyone, there would be no disputatious strife among men; there is no need to make a truce with weapons, mother; for reason [or ‘the word’] decides everything the sword of one’s enemies could.’104 It is the difference between people that makes for conflict; unfortunately, a world without difference is hardly imaginable, let alone attainable. Philia is not, it seems, the normative state of human relations; conflict is. One of the most quoted gnomai in literature (frequently emended slightly to fit different contexts, but always recognizable) is Hesiod’s ‘Potter envies potter and carpenter carpenter.’105 Philia is a remedial measure, but one which must be practised with caution.
One must not rush into it; one must test one’s friends thoroughly before committing to them; once committed, one must be absolutely loyal. ‘Do not make friends with everyone who wants to, but with those who are worthy of your nature.’106 ‘The tenth hour finds you with more friends than the first,’ says Publilius cynically, meaning that lots of people will call themselves friends when there is a chance of a free dinner.107 So, ‘Be slow to make friends, but once you have become a friend try to make it last, for it is equally disgraceful (aischron) to have no friends at all and to keep changing friends.’108 PSI 2.120 includes a series of gnomai on friendship which capture its complexity well.109 ‘What you don’t know about, throw yourself into examining, and you won’t make a mistake.’ ‘Do not laugh at jokes, for you will become an object of hate to those joked about.’110 ‘Do not interfere, either, in things that do not concern you.’ ‘Do not acquire either friends or enemies quickly.’ ‘Ward off the hostile man without hurting yourself.’ ‘Think yourself the comrade (hetairos) of people, not of things [or ‘money’].’ ‘Work gladly for the good fortune of your friends; in their ill fortune offer of yourself freely.’111
Trust is essential between friends,112 and friendship is a matter of deeds, not just words.113 ‘So trust your friend that there’s no place for your enemy.’114 ‘Trust your friends even in respect of what is not trustworthy, and do not trust the hostile even in respect of what is trustworthy.’ One text encourages us to be wary even of established friends: ‘Do not trust the appearances of all your friends.’115 On the other hand, it does not do to be too suspicious: ‘The man who fears his friend teaches his friend to fear.’116 Suspicion is a common human quality, but no better for that.117 Threats of physical or metaphysical retribution encourage readers to be trustworthy. ‘Whenever a man speaks fair while doing evil, and does not escape his neighbour’s notice, he will get double evil back,’ say three fragments.118 Once forfeited, trust cannot be regained.119 Philostratus quotes Homer: ‘Hateful as the gates of hell to me is the man who says one thing and hides another in his heart.’120
Ps.-Isocrates urges Demonicus to value his friends above his kin, on the grounds that they display his character better, and tells him to be generous (koinos) to them.121 ‘Think, having friends, that you have treasuries’ says Papyrus Bouriant 1, emphasizing again the connection between human and material resources in Graeco-Roman minds and the possibility that friends to whom one is generous may respond in kind.122
The same text offers us no fewer than three quotations on the subject of strict reciprocity, which is so important among friends: ‘Having taken, give back so that you may take whenever you want.’ ‘Look after strangers lest you should sometime become a stranger.’ ‘A timely good to friends in part returns.’123 Publilius too has an interest in reciprocity: ‘Expect from one man what you have done to another.’ ‘He who can’t give help shouldn’t ask for it.’124 ‘He who knows how to return help, gets more.’125 He goes further and expresses outrage at people who seek help without returning it: ‘Those who think that help is a gift are either bad or mad.’ ‘To take what you can’t return is fraud.’126 ‘It is best to help someone who will remember what he has received.’127 Not only the recipient benefits from the gift, however: the giver gets benefit from the act of giving, too.128
Expanded reciprocity is less of a theme in gnomai, but there are a few examples: ‘When you give help to the worthy you put everyone in your debt.’ ‘Whatever you give to the good, you give partly to yourself.’ ‘When you suffer much, much you could not suffer will come to you.’ ‘An impatient patient makes a cruel doctor.’129
Patriotism is not a common theme in gnomai, but it does occasionally appear as a force for social unity and harmony. ‘Nothing is sweeter than one’s native land,’ says the Odyssey, and is quoted by both Dio Chrysostom and Lucian.130 Plutarch quotes Simonides: ‘The state teaches a man.’131 For Publilius, the theme of patriotism is closely related to that of friendship. If you do not support your own people, you open the door to your enemies, and ‘conflict between citizens is the enemy’s opportunity’.132 Everyone can do their bit to safeguard their community: ‘He who wants to preserve the commonwealth, looks after his own,’ and ‘everyone is safe where one is defended’.133 It is taken for granted that exile is bad: an exile is like an unburied corpse.134
Along with doing good to your friends and fellow citizens goes doing ill to your enemies. ‘Who wants to do ill can always find a reason.’135 ‘Evil demands injury.’136 Friendship and enmity are, indeed, two sides of the same coin: the man with many friends must accept having enemies too.137 ‘There is no room for tears when your enemy is destroyed.’138 Publilius is unusual among gnomic collections in including a number of quotations about war and about how victors should behave to their enemies. ‘Prepare for war in peacetime.’ ‘Prepare for war for a long time that you may win quickly.’139 Some at least of his sayings are ostensibly directed at generals, and the quality of the general is important.140 So is his behaviour: ‘It is honourable to win, cruel to oppress, seemly to forgive.’141 You should be fair even to your enemies; you should also, however, be prudent and not make friends with your enemies, unless you think it will convert them into friends without cost to yourself.142
Within friendship, even a certain amount of conflict can be contained: ‘Rivalry is good’ says Pliny, quoting Hesiod, when it spurs friends to do better than each other.143 So is plain speaking: ‘If you bear with your friend’s vices, you make them your own.’144
Publilius’ collection, as the largest single gnomology of the period by far, promotes a number of other qualities by which good social relations are maintained, or bad ones avoided. Good people have a responsibility to see that evil does not prosper. ‘The man who lets a sin go invites blame.’ ‘The evil of a few men is the destruction of many.’145 Nor is it enough to look after one’s own interests: ‘The man who is good on his own behalf should be called bad.’146 To that end, it may be better not to get too used to good things lest one become blase.147
A quality which may or may not contribute to social harmony, depending on the way it is used, is anger. Publilius’ view of anger is complex. Anger is frightening, especially when the angry man has power.148 The angry must be careful that their emotion does not outrun their control, nor that they pick a fight with someone stronger than themselves.149 To fight the law or one’s own children, too, brings nothing but grief, while ‘When the angry man comes to himself he is angry with himself.’150 ‘Slowly but terribly the wise mind grows angry’ sums up the positive side of Publilius’ view. ‘The wrath of an upright man is weightiest,’151 but ‘anger is quick to die down in the good man’.152 Until it does, however, ‘avoid the angry man for a while . . .’.153
4. Intelligence and foolishness
Apart from friends, what the reader of gnomai most needs to pilot him through the tricky seas of human interaction is practical wisdom – in Latin prudentia or sapientia, in Greek, phronesis and its cognates, euboulia or sophia. He needs to be able to use his mind, his reason – mens, ratio, nous, phren, logos or logismos. Many gnomai commend practical wisdom. ‘Phronesis is the greatest good always.’154 It makes men good: ‘A man who looks at all these affairs with reason (to logismos) rejects evil and chooses good.’155 Sometimes reason is regarded as making virtue better: ‘It is right that we should praise and admire men who are good (kosmious) by nature, but those who are good by reason (logismos) are more worthy still.’156 It is a short step from there to: ‘The mind is a most prophetic god in us,’157 and, ‘Phronesis in a good cause is a blessing.’158
Reason is essential to life: ‘What is more than enough? Phronesis . . . What is more necessary than wealth? Phronimotes.’159 One should therefore ‘take advice from a wise (sophos) man’.160 The wise watch other people to avoid making their mistakes.161 They play safe, make plans, take precautions, and are careful not to initiate projects which they may later regret.162 ‘Caution is always hateful, but it makes for wisdom.’ ‘The plan that cannot be changed is a bad plan.’163 In uncertainty, the wise man takes counsel, though when truth is at stake, he acts decisively.164 Even if as a result of dealing with one’s affairs with wisdom, for some reason they go wrong, ‘it is the mark of a wise man to bear loss rightly . . .’.165 We have already come across a reason why the wisest of men may fare badly: ‘I want a drop of tyche or a cask of phrenon sums it up.166
For Publilius, prudentia encourages one always to be alert and ‘to watch whatever you can lose’.167 ‘By being cautious even the blind walk in safety.’168 ‘The unlucky had always best do nothing.’169 This leads Publilius to connect intelligence, courage and cowardice in an unusual way. ‘No-one ever got to the top through fear,’170 but for ordinary people, a judicious blend of courage and prudence, not to say fearfulness, facilitates social life. ‘The mind which knows how to fear knows how to progress safely.’ ‘The man who fears every ambush falls into none.’171 Fear usefully restrains the wicked.172 Having said that, on balance it is better to have more courage than fear. ‘Courage doesn’t know how to give in to catastrophe.’173 ‘Courage grows with daring, fear with delaying.’174 ‘By patience and courage a man makes himself happy.’175 ‘The man who is always fearful is damned every day.’176
Educational papyri are particularly keen to emphasize that phronesis can be acquired in school. ‘Letters are the beginning of understanding (tou phronein).’177 ‘Letters are a treasure, and what you learn never dies,’ as Trimalchio sentimentally expresses it.178 ‘. . . Above all, train your intellect (phronesis), for the greatest thing in a small space is a sound mind (nous) in a sound body,’179 says ps.-Isocrates at the culmination of his letter to Demonicus. The best ornaments of a man, he assures his pupil, are modesty, justice and sophrosyne,180 and they are also his greatest safeguard: ‘Believe that your staunchest bodyguard lies in the virtue of your friends, the loyalty of your citizens and your own phronesis . . .’181 (Another teacher of wisdom, in gnomai as in proverbs, is poverty: ‘Poverty makes a man try all sorts of things.’182 Age too may bring wisdom, though not always: ‘Sense, not age, discovers wisdom.’183 )
Phronesis is usually applied to the outer world and human relations, but the related theme of examining oneself, understanding oneself and being intellectually in control of oneself also makes a regular appearance in these texts. ‘Know yourself,’184 the bald advice of the Seven Sages, appears several times in gnomic papyri and is probably the most quoted gnome in all literature.185 ‘It is necessary to know yourself, if you would understand your affairs and what you should do,’186 says a gnome of the second or third century, amplifying the famous dictum.
A number of quotations encourage people to regulate themselves with a view to making friends and impressing people. Even more common is a stronger demand: ‘Rule yourself.’187 ‘[Restrain yourself?], if you have a bad temper,’188 and the same theme appears numerous times with minor variations. ‘Being a man, learn how to conquer anger.’189 Anger (along perhaps with love) is notoriously the passion which most disastrously darkens and leads astray the mind (another gnome, a fragment of Plutarch’s Quaestiones convivales, includes the same idea, saying that one of the things that makes a bad person bad is that their deliberative faculty is as if drunk190). Even when one is not angry, self-control is worth practising. An unfortunately incomplete gnome advises a child ‘ . . . to all, if you would do well (hypereches) in life’.191 Yet another advises the reader, ‘Do not hear or see what is not to your advantage.’192 We shall return to the inner life of ethical agents in Chapter Seven, but it is worth noting here that it is a significant presence among gnomic sayings, and that the rationale for restraining anger is largely utilitarian.
Foolishness is always bad.193 The foolish do not understand themselves or know their own ignorance.194 They are malleable and complaisant, lack foresight, fail to choose between options or make hasty judgements they later regret.195 ‘It is too late to take advice when one is in danger.’196 Only when they feel the pain of a mistake do they listen to advice, and that is too late.197 Pessimistically, ‘If you are not wise, there is no point in your listening to the wise,’198 says Publilius.