Frog: Toad, Hello! Have you read the rest of Book 1 of the Lives?
Toad: Blah.
Frog: Toad? What is wrong?
Toad: You and I chose to read Lives of the Eminent Philosophers to learn about eminent philosophers. None of these people are philosophers. It is boring.
Frog: Toad, you must read it again. It is brimming with wisdom. Did you not notice? It has been a week but still I remember these maxims:
Do not speak ill of the dead.
Honor old age.
Do not laugh at another’s misfortune. (Chilon)
It is hard to be good. (Pittacus)
Prefer knowledge to ignorance. (Cleobulus)
Keep your promises. (Periander)
Toad: There is too much advice. Sage sayings do not make you a philosopher. And some of these philosophers’ “maxims” do not inspire trust. Chilon may have said “Remain calm,” but he also said “When speaking, do not gesticulate; for that is a sign of madness.” And I see you did not quote Bias, who said “men should love their friends as if they would one day hate them, since the majority of men are bad.”
Frog: Well that is because the story of Bias made me sad.
Toad: But Frog, that was the best one. Remember how he died: in a trial, Bias
had been pleading on behalf of some client. When he finished his speech, he leaned his head on his grandson’s chest. Opposing counsel made his speech, and when the judges voted and issued a verdict in favor of the man Bias was representing, the court was dismissed and Bias was found dead in his grandson’s arms.
This is not a sad story. Bias won his case.
Frog: But Toad, it can never be a good thing when Bias wins the case.
[Toad heaves a heavy sigh.]
Frog: Toad, you are also missing how funny these stories are.
Toad: I did not think they were funny.
Frog: The Lives shows that the ancient Greeks did not just invent philosophy, they also invested philosophy with its superior sense of humor.
Toad: Frog, this must be a dream. I have never heard a funny philosophy joke.
Frog: Have you not seen the spoofs philosophers have written of each others’ styles of reasoning? Here is one—John Rawls’ “proof” of a proposition P:
It would be nice to have a deductive argument that P from self-evident premises. Unfortunately I am unable to provide one. So I will have to rest content with the following intuitive considerations in its support: P.
Toad: Maybe, Frog, you are right. But if so, then just as it is true, in general, that today’s leaders are mere dwarfs before the greats of the past, so also it is true that philosophical humor has been in decline since 500 BC. Anacharsis was funnier than any of those “proofs.” Here, if you do not mind my repeating it, is the story of his visit to Solon:
On arriving at Solon’s house Anacharsis told one of his servants to announce that he had come and wished to see Solon and, if possible, to become his guest-friend. And the servant, when he conveyed the message, was ordered by Solon to tell Anarcharsis that men generally make guests only of persons from their own country. In response Anacharsis said that he was now in Solon’s own country and had a right to be entertained as a guest. And Solon, struck by his quick-wittedness, admitted him and made him his greatest friend.
Toad: Frog, do you get the joke? Anacharsis was standing at Solon’s door, so in a sense he was now “from Solon’s own country.” And he came up with this riposte on the spot.
Frog: I am surprised you chose that story. About Anarcharsis we are also told that, “When asked which are the safest vessels he said, ‘Those in dry dock.’” That is much funnier. But Anarcharsis’s jokes prove nothing about Greek humor on average. He was exceptional. Look, he also invented the anchor and the potter’s wheel.
Toad: Ugh. [He pauses.] I have just remembered the story of Anarcharsis and the oracle. Frog, I guess you are right; he was not like the others.
Frog: I very much like stories about the oracle. Can you tell that one again?
Toad: Anacharsis asked the oracle if anyone was wiser than he. (This is the philosopher’s “mirror mirror on the wall.”) The oracle replied that Myson was.
Frog: Oh yes, that does indeed make Anacharsis stand out, for it is unusual for philosophers to obsessively rank themselves against each other. But this Myson, who was wiser than Anacharsis, I do not remember him.
Toad: The sketch of his life in the Lives contains nothing memorable.
Frog: That is too bad. I guess his great accomplishments had been lost by the time the Lives was written.
Toad: I myself think that in reality he was not so wise, and that this was one of the oracle’s little jokes. Certainly some of these sages, far from being wise, were quite wicked. Do not forget Periander:
In a fit of anger, he killed his wife, either throwing a footstool at her, or with a kick, when she was pregnant, having trusted the false accusations of concubines.
[Now is it Frog’s turn to sigh.]
Toad: He then had the concubines burned alive.
Frog: Yes Toad, I remember Periander. He is also reported to be the first to have had a bodyguard.
[There is a pause. Frog looks away from Toad, off into the distance.]
Toad: Oh Frog, I did not mean to make you sad. Look, you are right, there are miracles and wonder in these stories. Epimenides! He “stepped out of the road at midday and fell asleep in a cave for fifty-seven years”! He then awoke and lived many more years, and was “regarded as the man most loved by the gods.” Among his accomplishments was ending a plague in Athens. “He claimed to have come back to life many times.” Is he not a light shining in the darkness?
Frog, smiling: Yes Toad, indeed he is.
Toad: I will try not to lose heart. I see that in Book 2 we will learn about Socrates, and Phaedo, and Glaucon, and others.
Frog: Good! Now come Toad, the sun is shining; let us walk so that it may shine on the backs of our knees.1
This piece was previously published in 2023.
Facts and quotations are from Lives of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius, translated by Pamela Mensch.