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"The Buried Classic" from Ancient Greece,
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Web Publication by
Mountain Man Graphics, Australia
in the Southern Spring of 1995
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"The Buried Classic" from Ancient Greece,
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Web Publication by
Mountain Man Graphics, Australia
in the Southern Spring of 1995
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"Let him go on like a drunkard, but do you tell me why do you not invite to the same table as yourself, nor hold worthy of other recognition those who accompany this man, though they are his brother and son, as you tell me?"
"Because," said Iarchas", they reckon to be kings one day themselves, and by being made, themselves a to suffer disdain they must be taught not to distain others."
And remarking that the sages were eighteen in number, he again asked Iarchas, what was the meaning of their being just so many and no more.
"For," he said, "the number eighteen is not a square number, nor is it one of the numbers held in esteem and honour, as are the numbers ten and twelve and sixteen and so forth."
Thereupon the Indian took him up and said: "Neither are we beholden to number nor number to us, but we owe our superior honour to wisdom and virtue; and sometimes we are more in number than we now are, and sometimes fewer. And indeed I have heard that when my grandfather was enrolled among these wise men, the youngest of them all, they were seventy in number but when he reached his 130th year, he was left here all alone, because not one of them survived him at that time, nor was there to be found anywhere in India a nature that was either philosophic or noble.
The Egyptians accordingly wrote and congratulated him warmly on being left alone for four years in his tenure of this throne, but he begged them to cease reproaching the Indians for the paucity of their sages. Now we, O Apollonius, have heard from the Egyptians of the custom of the Elians, and that the Hellanodicae, who preside over the Olympic games, are ten in number; but we do not approve of the rule imposed in the case of these men; for they leave the choice of them to the lot, and the lot has no discernment, for a worse man might be as easity chosen by lot as a better one. On the other hand would they not make a mistake; if they had made merit the qualification and chosen them by vote? Yes, a parallel one, for if you are on no account to exceed the number ten, there may more than ten just men, and you will deprive some of the rank which their merits entitle them to, while if on the other hand there are not so many as ten, then restriction of the number is meaningless. Wherefore the Elians would be much wiser-minded if they allowed the number to fluctuate, merely insisting on justice as a qualification for all alike".
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"The Buried Classic" from Ancient Greece,
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Web Publication by
Mountain Man Graphics, Australia
in the Southern Spring of 1995
|