The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

[1] “The religion of the ancient Persians was the worship of fire or of the elements, in which fire was symbolical of the Deity. At a later period, in the time of the Greeks, the ancient worship was changed into the adoration of the stars (Sabæism), especially of the sun and of the morning star. This religion was distinguished by a simple and majestic character. Its priests were called Magi.”—Tenneman’s Manual of the History of Philosophy, Introd. § 70.

[2] “The Chaldæans were devoted to the worship of the stars and to astrology; the nature of their climate and country disposing them to it. The worship of the stars was revived by them and widely disseminated even subsequently to the Christian era.”—Ibid. § 71.

[3] “Cicero speaks of those who in India are accounted philosophers, living naked and enduring the greatest severity of winter without betraying any feeling of pain, and displaying the same insensibility when exposed to the flames.”—Tusc. Quæst. v. 27.

[4] “The religion of the Britons was one of the most considerable parts of their government, and the Druids who were their priests, possessed great authority among them. Besides ministering at the altar, and directing all religious duties, they presided over the education of youth; they possessed both the civil and criminal jurisdiction, they decided all controversies among states as well as among private persons, and whoever refused to submit to their decree was exposed to the most severe penalties. The sentence of excommunication was pronounced against him; he was forbidden access to the sacrifices of public worship; he was debarred all intercourse with his fellow citizens even in the common affairs of life: his company was universally shunned as profane and dangerous, he was refused the protection of law, and death itself became an acceptable relief from the misery and infamy to which he was exposed. Thus the bonds of government, which were naturally loose among that rude and turbulent people, were happily corroborated by the terrors of their superstition.

“No species of superstition was ever more terrible than that of the Druids; besides the several penalties which it was in the power of the ecclesiastics to inflict in this world, they inculcated the eternal transmigration of souls, and thereby extended their authority as far as the fears of their timorous votaries. They practised their rites in dark groves or other secret recesses, and in order to throw a greater mystery over their religion, they communicated their doctrines only to the initiated, and strictly forbade the committing of them to writing, lest they should at any time be exposed to the examination of the profane and vulgar. Human sacrifices were practised among them; the spoils of war were often devoted to their divinities, and they punished with the severest tortures whoever dared to secrete any part of the consecrated offering. These treasures they kept secreted in woods and forests, secured by no other guard than the terrors of their religion; and their steady conquest over human avidity may be regarded as more signal than their prompting men to the most extraordinary and most violent efforts. No idolatrous worship ever attained such an ascendant over mankind as that of the ancient Gauls and Britons. And the Romans after their conquest, finding it impossible to reconcile those nations to the laws and institutions of their masters while it maintained its authority, were at last obliged to abolish it by penal statutes, a violence which had never in any other instance been resorted to by those tolerating conquerors.”—Hume’s History of England, chap. 1. § 1.

[5] “Zamolxis, or Zalmoxis, so called from the bear-skin (ζάλμος) in which he was wrapped as soon as he was born, was a Getan, and a slave of Pythagoras at Samos; having been emancipated by his master, he travelled into Egypt; and on his return to his own country he introduced the ideas which he had acquired in his travels on the subject of civilisation, religion, and the immortality of the soul. He was made priest of the chief deity among the Getæ, and was afterwards himself worshipped as a divine person. He was said to have lived in a subterraneous cavern for three years, and after that to have re-appeared among his countrymen.” Herodotus, however, who records these stories (iv. 95), expresses his disbelief of them, placing him before the time of Pythagoras by many years, and seems to incline to the belief that he was an indigenous Getan deity.

[6] The real time of Zoroaster is, as may be supposed, very uncertain, but he is said by some eminent writers to have lived in the time of Darius Hystaspes; though others, apparently on better grounds, place him at a very far earlier date. He is not mentioned by Herodotus at all. His native country too is very uncertain. Some writers, among whom are Ctesias and Ammian, call him a Bactrian, while Porphyry speaks of him as a Chaldæan, and Pliny as a native of Proconnesus;—Niebuhr considers him a purely mythical personage. The great and fundamental article of the system (of the Persian theology) was the celebrated doctrine of the two principles; a bold and injudicious attempt of Eastern philosophy to reconcile the existence of moral and physical evil with the attributes of a beneficent Creator and governor of the world. The first and original being, in whom, or by whom the universe exists, is denominated, in the writings of Zoroaster, Time without bounds.… From either the blind or the intelligent operation of this infinite Time, which bears but too near an affinity to the Chaos of the Greeks, the two secondary but active principles of the universe were from all eternity produced; Ormusd and Ahriman, each of them possessed of the powers of creation, but each disposed by his invariable nature to exercise them with different designs; the principle of good is eternally absorbed in light, the principle of evil is eternally buried in darkness. The wise benevolence of Ormusd formed man capable of virtue, and abundantly provided his fair habitation with the materials of happiness.

By his vigilant providence the motion of the planets, the order of the seasons, and the temperate mixture of the elements are preserved. But the maker of Ahriman has long since pierced Ormusd’s Egg, or in other words, has violated the harmony of his works. Since that fatal irruption, the most minute articles of good and evil are intimately intermingled and agitated together; the rankest poisons spring up among the most salutary plants; deluges, earthquakes, and conflagrations attest the conflict of nature, and the little world of man is perpetually shaken by vice and misfortune. While the rest of mankind are led away captives in the chains of their infernal enemy, the faithful Persian alone reserves his religious adoration for his friend and protector Ormusd, and fights under his banner of light, in the full confidence that he shall, in the last day, share the glory of his triumph. At that decisive period, the enlightened wisdom of goodness will render the power of Ormusd superior to the furious malice of his rival; Ahriman and his followers, disarmed and subdued, will sink into their native darkness, and virtue will maintain the eternal peace and harmony of the universe.… As a legislator, Zoroaster “discovered a liberal concern for the public and private happiness seldom to be found among the visionary schemes of superstition. Fasting and celibacy, the common means of purchasing the divine favour, he condemns with abhorrence, as a criminal rejection of the best gifts of Providence.”—Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, c. viii.

[7] This is the account given by Virgil—

Spretæ Ciconum quo munere matres

Inter sacra Deûm nocturnique orgia Bacchi,

Discerptum latos juvenem sparsere per agros.—Georg. iv. 520.

Which Dryden translates—

The Thracian matrons who the youth accus’d,

Of love disdain’d and marriage rites refus’d;

With furies and nocturnal orgies fir’d,

At length against his sacred life conspir’d;

Whom ev’n the savage beasts had spar’d they kill’d,

And strew’d his mangled limbs about the field.

[8] This was the temple of the national deity of the Ionians, Neptune Heliconius, on Mount Mycale.—Vide Smith, Dict. Gr. and Rom. Antiq.

[9] Vide Thirlwall, Hist. of Greece, ii. p. 34.

[10] One of the Sporades.

[11] An island near Crete.

[12] Hom. Il. 2. 671. Dryden’s Version.

[13] Vide Herod. lib. 1. c. 30-33.

[14] A drachma was something less than ten pence.

[15] “Ἔνη καὶ νέα the last day of the month: elsewhere τριανιὰς. So called for this reason. The old Greek year was lunar; now the moon’s monthly orbit is twenty-nine and a half days. So that if the first month began with the sun and moon together at sunrise, at the month’s end it would be sunset; and the second month would begin at sunset. To prevent this irregularity, Solon made the latter half day belong to the first month; so that this thirtieth day consisted of two halves, one belonging to the old, the other to the new moon. And when the lunar month fell into disuse, the last day of the calendar month was still called Ἔνη καὶ νέα.”—L. & S. Greek Lexicon, in v. ἔνος.

[16] Herodotus mentions the case of Periander’s children, iii. 50, and the death of his wife, and his burning the clothes of all the Corinthian women, v. 92.

[17] Some propose to read καρπὸν, fruit, instead of καπνὸν, smoke, here; others explain this saying as meaning that the Greeks avoided houses on the hills in order not to be annoyed with the smoke from the low cottage, and yet did not use coal, but wood, which would make more smoke.

[18] This refers to the result of the war which Antipater, who became regent of Macedonia on the death of Alexander the Great, carried on against the confederacy of Greek states, of which Athens was the head; and in which, after having defeated them at Cranon, he compelled the Athenians to abolish the democracy, and to admit a garrison into Munychia.

[19] Φρύγανα, sticks or faggots.

[20] After the battle of Arginusæ.

[21] “This is not quite correct. Socrates believed that the dæmon which attended him, limited his warnings to his own conduct; preventing him from doing what was wrong, but not prompting him to do right.”—See Grote’s admirable chapter on Socrates. Hist. of Greece, vol. v.

[22] Grote gives good reasons for disbelieving this.

[23] The Greek is, ἐν τῷ πρὸς Ξενοφῶντα ἀποστασίου—“ἀποστασίου δίκη, an action against a freedman for having forsaken or slighted his προστάτης.”—L. & S.

[24] This is exactly the character that Horace gives of him:—

Omnis Aristippum decuit color et status et res;

Tentantem majora, fere præsentibus æequum.—

Ep. i. 23, 24.

[25] Plutarch, in his life of Pompey, attributes these lines to Sophocles, but does not mention the play in which they occurred.