Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​Chilon, son of Damagetus, was a Lacedaemonian. He composed elegiac poems to the extent of two hundred lines, and used to say that foresight regarding the future, grasped by reasoning, is the virtue of a man. And to his brother, who was indignant because he himself had not become an ephor while Chilon was one, he said: “For I know how to suffer injustice, but you do not.” He became ephor in the fifty-fifth Olympiad; but Pamphila says in the sixth. And he was the first to become ephor in the archonship of Euthydemus, as Sosicrates says. He was also the first to propose flanking the kings with ephors, though Satyrus attributes this to Lycurgus. This man, as Herodotus says in his first book, when Hippocrates was sacrificing at Olympia and the cauldrons boiled spontaneously without fire, advised him either not to marry, or, if he had a wife, to send her away and disown his children.

​They also say that he asked Aesop what Zeus was doing; and Aesop replied: “He is humbling the lofty and exalting the lowly.” When asked in what respect the educated differ from the uneducated, he said: “In good hopes.” When asked what is difficult, he replied: “To keep secrets, to dispose of leisure well, and to be able to bear being wronged.” He also gave the following precepts: To rule the tongue, especially at a banquet. Not to speak ill of one's neighbors; otherwise, one will hear things that will cause grief.

​Not to threaten anyone, for that is womanish. To hasten more quickly to the misfortunes of friends than to their good fortunes. To contract an inexpensive marriage. Not to speak ill of the dead. To honor old age. To guard oneself. To choose a loss rather than shameful gain; for the former grieves but once, while the latter grieves forever. Not to laugh at someone in misfortune. When one is strong, to be gentle, so that neighbors may respect rather than fear one. To learn to manage one's own household well. Not to let the tongue outrun the mind. To master anger. Not to hate divination. Not to desire impossibilities. Not to hasten upon the road. When speaking, not to move the hand, for that is frantic. To obey the laws. To practice tranquility.

​Among the verses sung of his, that one especially won renown: “Upon whetstones of rock gold is tested, giving a clear trial; and in gold the mind of good men and bad has yielded proof.” They say that once, when he was already an old man, he said that he was conscious of no unlawful deed in his life, but was in doubt about one thing: for once, when judging a cause for a friend, he himself voted according to the law, but persuaded his fellow judge to acquit the friend, in order that he might preserve both, the law and the friend. He became most famous among the Greeks by his foreknowledge concerning Cythera, the Laconian island. For having learned its nature, he said: “Would that it had never existed, or having come to be, had been submerged in the sea.”

​And well did he foresee. For Demaratus, when an exile from the Lacedaemonians, advised Xerxes to keep his ships stationed at the island; and Greece would have been taken if Xerxes had obeyed. Later, during the Peloponnesian War, Nicias subdued the island, placed a garrison of Athenians there, and inflicted very great harm upon the Lacedaemonians. He was brief in speech; whence Aristagoras of Miletus also calls this manner of speaking “Chilonean.”... But others say it belongs to Branchus, who founded the shrine at Branchidae. He was an old man around the fifty-second Olympiad, when Aesop the fabulist was flourishing. He died, as Hermippus says, in Pisa, after having embraced his son, who was an Olympic victor in boxing. He suffered this through an excess of joy and the infirmity of advanced age; and all those attending the festival escorted him to the grave with the highest honors. There is also an epigram of our own upon him:

“To you, light-bringing Polydeuces, I render thanks, because the son of Chilon won the fresh wild olive in boxing. And if the father, seeing his child crowned, sank down in joy, it is not to be blamed; may such a death be mine.” And upon his statue the following is inscribed: “This Chilon did spear-crowned Sparta bring forth, who was first in wisdom among the Seven Sages.” He uttered the maxim: “Give a pledge, and ruin is at hand.” There is also this brief letter of his: Chilon to Periander “You write to me of an expedition against foreign lands, as though you would march out yourself; but I think that even domestic affairs are precarious for a monarch, and I count that tyrant happy who dies at home by his own natural end.”