Simonides' Poem

I will try to explain to you my opinion about this poem of Simonides.

There is a very ancient philosophy which is more cultivated in Crete and Lacedaemon than in any other part of Hellas.

• There are more philosophers in those countries than anywhere else in the world.

This, however, is a secret which the Lacedaemonians deny.

They pretend to be ignorant just because they want to be thought of as ruling by valour of arms as opposed to wisdom like the Sophists of whom Protagoras was speaking.

If the true reason of their superiority were disclosed, then all men would be practising their wisdom.

This secret of theirs has never been discovered by the imitators of Lacedaemonian fashions in other cities. These imitators:

• go around with their ears bruised in imitation of them
• have the caestus bound on their arms
• are always in training
• wear short cloaks

They imagine that these are the practices which have enabled the Lacedaemonians to conquer the other Hellenes.

When the Spartans want to unbend and hold free conversation with their wise men without secrecy, they drive out all these laconizers, and any other foreigners in their country.

They they hold a philosophical seance unknown to foreigners.

They are like the Cretans in that they forbid their young men to go out into other cities. This is so that they will not unlearn the lessons which they have taught them.

In Lacedaemon and Crete, both men and women have a pride in their high cultivation.

If a man converses with the most ordinary Lacedaemonian, he will find him seldom good for general conversation.

But at any point in the discourse he will be darting out some notable saying, terse and full of meaning, with unerring aim. The person he is talking to would be like a child in his hands.

Many of our own age and of former ages have noted that the true Lacedaemonian type of character has the love of philosophy even stronger than the love of gymnastics.

They are conscious that only a perfectly educated man is capable of uttering such expressions.

Examples were:

1. Thales of Miletus
2. Pittacus of Mitylene
3. Bias of Priene
4. Our own Solon
5. Cleobulus the Lindian
6. Myson the Chenian
7. Chilo the Spartan

All these were lovers and emulators and disciples of the Spartan culture.

Their wisdom was of this character:

• It consisting of short memorable sentences, which they severally uttered.
• They met together and dedicated in the temple of Apollo at Delphi, as the first-fruits of their wisdom, the far-famed inscriptions, which are in all men’s mouths—‘Know thyself,’ and ‘Nothing too much.’

This Spartan brevity was the style of primitive philosophy.

Pittacus says: ‘Hard is it to be good.’

This was privately circulated and approved by the wise.

Simonides wanted the fame of wisdom. He overthrew this saying.

He composed the entire poem with the secret intention of damaging Pittacus and his saying.

Simonides must have been a lunatic, if, in the very first words of the poem, wanting to say only that to become good is hard, he inserted (Greek) ‘on the one hand’ (‘on the one hand to become good is hard’).

There would be no reason for the introduction of (Greek), unless you suppose him to speak with a hostile reference to the words of Pittacus.

Pittacus is saying ‘Hard is it to be good,’ and he, in refutation of this thesis, rejoins that the truly hard thing, Pittacus, is to become good, not joining ’truly’ with ‘good,’ but with ‘hard.’

Not, that the hard thing is to be truly good, as though there were some truly good men, and there were others who were good but not truly good (this would be a very simple observation, and quite unworthy of Simonides); but you must suppose him to make a trajection of the word ’truly’ (Greek), construing the saying of Pittacus thus (and let us imagine Pittacus to be speaking and Simonides answering him):