Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​He was succeeded by Lyco, the son of Astyanax, of the Troad, an eloquent man and exceedingly attentive to the education of youth. For he used to say that modesty and love of honor ought to be yoked together with boys, as spur and bridle are to horses. His vivid expressiveness and ringing resonance in diction are apparent also from this: for he speaks in this way concerning a poor maiden: “For a maiden who, for lack of a dowry, outruns the blooming season of her youth is a heavy burden to a father.” Wherefore they say Antigonus said this about him, that it was not possible, just as with the fragrance and charm of an apple, to transfer it elsewhere, but upon the man himself, just as upon the tree, each of his spoken words had to be contemplated.

​And this was because in speaking he was sweet in the highest degree; wherefore some people even added the letter gamma to his name. In writing, however, he was unlike himself. At any rate, concerning those who repent because they did not learn when there was time, and who pray now, he spoke with fine words in this manner: he said that they “accuse themselves, revealing through an impossible prayer repentance for incorrigible sloth.” And he used to say that those who deliberate incorrectly fail in reasoning, just as if testing a straight nature with a crooked ruler, or a face in rippling water or a distorted mirror. And while many go after the crown in the agora, for that at Olympia few or none go. Having often given much advice to the Athenians, he benefited them in the highest degree.

​He was also most neat in his dress, so that he wore cloaks of unsurpassable softness, as Hermippus says. Moreover, he was very fond of gymnastics and of sound bodily condition, displaying a thoroughly athletic bearing, having crushed ears and a sunburnt frame, as Antigonus of Carystus says; on this account he is also said to have wrestled at the Ilieia in his homeland and to have played ball. He was an intimate friend like no other to the circle of Eumenes and Attalus, who also supplied him with most abundant resources. Antiochus also tried to attach him to himself, but did not succeed.

​He was so hostile to Hieronymus the Peripatetic that he was the only one who did not meet him on the annual festival day, about which we have spoken in the Life of Arcesilaus. He presided over the school for forty-four years, Strato having left it to him in his will in the hundred and twenty-seventh Olympiad. Moreover, he also heard Panthoides the dialectician. He died at the age of seventy-four, worn out by gout. And we have an epigram upon him: “No, by him, not even Lyco shall we pass by, because gouty he died; but I wonder at this above all, how that road to Hades, which is so long, he who formerly walked with the feet of others, ran in a single night.”

​There have also been other Lycos: the first, a Pythagorean; the second, this man himself; the third, an epic poet; the fourth, an epigrammatic poet. And we have also met with the following will of this philosopher: “These dispositions I make concerning my affairs, in case I cannot endure this sickness: all the property at home I give to my brothers Astyanax and Lyco. And I think there ought to be paid out of these whatever debts I have incurred at Athens by holding money from someone or by having spent it, and whatever may be expended on the funeral and the other customary rites.