~by David Aiken~
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| Periander of Corinth |
Ancient ‘How to’s’ for Commencements and
Recommencements. Every day brings new chances for us, just as it brings along chances
to be new. An ancient king of the Greek city of Corinth, Periander (Περίανδρος;
625-585 BC), left behind two bits of pearly wisdom useful to this idea, and which
have served Greek posterity well: “Practice
everything”; and "Be farsighted
with everything." Now at first blush, this might not seem like much as far as pithy philosophical
advice and wise witticisms go from a one-time sagacious king of ancient Corinth.
But then, that is precisely our story.
§ On Tyranny, Tyrants, and Pearls of Wisdom. Periander of
Corinth was a tyrant. In the Greece of high antiquity, however, tyrants were
not necessarily ‘tyrannical’ or oppressive in our modern sense of the word.
Rather, throughout much of Greek history the ‘tyrant’ was simply a title given
to rulers such as Gyges of Lydia, Oedipus (of Sophocles’ fame) and Periander;
it referenced an authoritarian structure for the government of the polis, as
opposed to oligarchies or aristocracies. Nonetheless, it is quite evident that
a change occurred at some point in the perception of the tyrant and tyrannical
governance in ancient Greece, because by the 4th century the term is
clearly become pejorative, particularly in Plato.
Now although Periander was a tyrant, this did
not keep him from also being named one of the Seven Sages of Ancient Greece by,
among others, Diogenes Laertius (3rd century AD). The Seven Sages
was a select cast of characters from the 6th century BC, which was
to become for all Greeks the go-to fountainhead of Abbreviated Wisdom, which
took the form of witty and sagacious proverbs—the Seven Sages for the Greeks was
an early predecessor of Benjamin Franklin’s Poor
Richard’s Almanac for revolutionary America. This Greek list of seven
included Thales, Solon the lawmaker, Periander, Cleobulus, Chilon, Bias, and
Pittacus; the list is not always exactly the same, however—in Plato’s Protagoras, for example, Socrates does
not include Periander among the Seven Sages.
In his
historical incarnation, Periander was the second tyrant of Corinth (following
his father, Cypselus, who was the first of that familial dynasty), and was by
all accounts an extremely effective ruler, bringing much prosperity and wealth
to Corinth through both trade and conquest. It is worth remembering about
Corinth that much later in its history, in the early Christian period, the city
had already long gone into decline; the letters of the Apostle Paul attest to
Corinth as a center of Aphrodite worship and libertine conduct, which apparently
caused problems in the Corinthian Christian churches.
During
the rule of the tyrant Periander, however, some 5 centuries earlier, Corinth had
enjoyed a period of exceptional stability. The historical consensus seems to be that
his rule was both just and fair, and that he was interested in the evenhanded distribution
of wealth in his polis. In addition to being himself both a philosopher and
poet, he also encouraged the arts though a regular fare of art festivals, and
had a sustained building program. That said, according to Herodotus (Histories V
91-93) there
is one little anecdotal skeleton in this wise and skillful tyrant’s closet,
which is his rather erratic attachment to his wife; but perhaps this was only
to be expected from a polis devoted to things of the goddess Aphrodite. To wit:
first, Periander killed his wife in a fit of rage while she was pregnant, although
the exact means of and motive for killing her is in dispute, but then he apparently,
writes Herodotus, “baked his bread in a cold oven” –a euphemism
suggestive enough to put anyone off their morning brioche.
Diogenes (Ch. 7) records for History the commemorative
inscription that was placed by the Corinthians in memory of Periander the
tyrant:
[97] In mother earth
here Periander lies,
The prince of
sea-girt Corinth rich and wise.
My own epitaph on him
is:
Grieve not because
thou hast not gained thine end,
But take with
gladness all the gods may send;
Be warned by
Periander's fate, who died
Of grief that one
desire should be denied.
§ Greek Proverbial Wisdom
#1: “Rehearse (repeatedly) everything.” So, Periander the philosopher and poet left
behind proverbial pearls of wisdom, among which one of the aphorisms that
interest us, which is commonly translated as, “Practice everything” (μελέτη τὸ πᾶν; meleth to pan-TLG, Diogenes
Laertius, Vitae philosophorum, Bk 1,
section 99, ln. 5). The ‘practice’
bit of Periander’s adage, which is μελέτη [meleth;
feminine noun], generally means care or
attention; and the everything bob is τὸ πᾶν [to
pan; an accusative of respect], which means with respect to everything. Assembled, this gives us: Give care with respect to everything.
Now the bob, everything, is
straight-forward enough to pass over quickly; but it is actually the practice bit that gives us some food for
wise thinking.
Life as a martial art. The noun μελέτη [meleth] is generally rendered by
translators as an imperative: practice.
Be that as it may, this noun comes from the verb mello [μέλω], whose first sense is to have care for, attention to action. But this fuses into
a second denotative meaning, which is practice
or exercise, such as the kinds of
exercises one might do consistent with Spartan discipline. This second sense is
reinforced even more strongly, again drawing upon Thucydides, by its use in a military
context as a training exercise or practice or drill.
In
the most radical sense of this wise saying, then, in addition to the idea of
simply practicing everything, as the
majority of translators render it, μελέτη τὸ πᾶν has more the sense of training or drilling with
respect to everything. The difference may seem pedantic, but there is a world
of color and intensity in the military connotation that is lacking with just practice. With this martial coloration, μελέτη τὸ πᾶν describes the frame of mind of someone who
accomplishes the days of his life with attention to detail and precision in
execution—perhaps much like the world-class athlete who trains unceasingly for
the day he will have to compete for the prize, with only this difference: that for
the Wise Man each day is its own competition. In this sense, Periander’s adage
is better translated: Train for
everything.
Life as staged
performance. A second denotative coloring of this proverb (μελέτη τὸ πᾶν; meleth to pan), is based on μελέτη [meleth] as a theatrical or speechifying term. It is used frequently of orators who practice their
speeches (cf. Demosthenes), or of actors (per Aristotle) who study
and rehearse their lines and gestures and movements for a performance. Rendered
with this coloring in mind, Train
(repeatedly) for everything begins to look more like, Rehearse (repeatedly) everything.
Finally, with the addition of (repeatedly) in Periander’s adage, Rehearse (repeatedly) everything, the Phrontisterion translator is able to provide
an additional bit of color that is also the proper of μελέτη [meleth]—the idea that we should study
and rehearse everything we do until all of the articulations and intonations
and gestures of our Live Performances should become habit, until we become so
accustomed to the dramatic ‘show’ of
living out our lives, that the enactment of each hour of each day is the equivalent
of Opening Night in the Theatre of Life.
§ Greek Proverbial
Wisdom #2: “Always look ahead.” A second piece of
wisdom attributed to Periander the tyrant
is, "Be farsighted with everything" (Greek: Ὅρα τὸ μέλλον, hora
to mellon). Quite briefly, Be
farsighted, which is the common rendering, is an effective translation for
the entire expression; with everything
is an addition that is neither in the Greek proverb, nor necessary to the sense.
Now the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae does not formally attribute this second
precept specifically to Periander; but it is certainly attributed to the Seven
Sages of Ancient Greece. Other sources do indeed link it specifically to our
one-time tyrant of Corinth.
Ὅρα [hora] is the present imperative of the verb ‘to see’, thus giving us: watch, look, observe, or the older, behold. The sense is clearly banal enough: to keep something before the eyes; keep in sight; keeping an eye on it. The second denotation, however, is perhaps even more interesting to the astute insight on offer here, because the imperative, Ὅρα [hora], invites us, with some sense of urgency, to look out for, or to make provision for the future (pro-vision (Latin) whence the notion of fore-sight). Tὸ μέλλον [to mellon], which is an accusative single neutral participle being used as the direct object of the phrase, means something like: whatever is about to come about. In mind, of course, is simply future time—we should not be neglectful of the future [the unknown?].
Ὅρα [hora] is the present imperative of the verb ‘to see’, thus giving us: watch, look, observe, or the older, behold. The sense is clearly banal enough: to keep something before the eyes; keep in sight; keeping an eye on it. The second denotation, however, is perhaps even more interesting to the astute insight on offer here, because the imperative, Ὅρα [hora], invites us, with some sense of urgency, to look out for, or to make provision for the future (pro-vision (Latin) whence the notion of fore-sight). Tὸ μέλλον [to mellon], which is an accusative single neutral participle being used as the direct object of the phrase, means something like: whatever is about to come about. In mind, of course, is simply future time—we should not be neglectful of the future [the unknown?].
So,
this tidbit of wise insight invites us, individually, to take into
consideration, to keep an eye on, not just the today of our life, but to keep
in mind as well the Unknown Tomorrow that constantly attends us. The admonition
is not just preventative, as in la Fontaine’s fable of the cicada and the ant (La cigale et la fourmi), where one tries
to forestall ‘grim Necessity’, as Homer might have said, but it encourages us,
also, to look forward in optimism to that which attends us, and with a spirit
of adventure, to see what Tomorrow holds in store for us.
Similarly, but using bugs to carry along his
message, in his moral fable with the same wise punchline as the ancient Greek
sage-King, Periander, the French fabulist Jean de la Fontaine’s (1621-1695) encourages
us to prepare today for all our tomorrows (link).
The
cicada (cricket) having sung
All summer long,
Found herself most destitute
When the north wind blew:
Not even one little morsel
Of fly or worm.
All summer long,
Found herself most destitute
When the north wind blew:
Not even one little morsel
Of fly or worm.
[La Cigale, ayant chanté
Tout l'été,
Se trouva fort dépourvue
Quand la bise fut venue.
Pas un seul petit morceau
De mouche ou de vermisseau .]
Tout l'été,
Se trouva fort dépourvue
Quand la bise fut venue.
Pas un seul petit morceau
De mouche ou de vermisseau .]
§ On Periander, the Etymological Man. We have already seen that Periander of
Corinth was a wise and philosophically shrewd tyrant in ancient Greece,
although he may have had a rather odd conception of baked bread. But there is
also another interpretative possibility for reading Periander; and that is to
read his all-too human wisdom as truly peri-andros—
as brief but perceptive insights for and
about all men, which is the lexical meaning of peri-andros. In this sense, the wise king Periander provides for us
our daily bread of peri-andros wisdom,
of reminders about how to live well and perceptively as men in the world—and peri-andros thus becomes finally a
metaphor for each of us.
The
wiki-universe tells us that, according to tradition, each
of the seven sages of Greek antiquity supposedly represents some specific
aspect of worldly wisdom, which was then reduced to its aphoristic quintessence.
The list tends to go something like this:
·
"Moderation is
best in all things" -- Cleobulus of
Lindos (πάν μέτρον άριστον, pan metron ariston).
·
"Nothing in
excess" -- Solon of Athens (μηδὲν ἄγαν, meden
agan).
·
"Do not desire
the impossible" -- Chilon of Sparta
(μὴ ἐπιθυμεῖν ἀδυνάτων, mei epithumein adunaton).
·
"Most men are
bad" -- Bias of Priene (πλεῖστοι ἄνθρωποι
κακοί, pleistoi anthropoi kakoi).
·
"Know
thyself" -- Thales of Miletus (γνῶθι σεαυτόν, gnothi
seauton).
·
"Know thy
opportunity" -- Pittacus of
Mytilene: (γνῶθι καιρὸν, gnothi kairon).
·
"Be farsighted
with everything" -- Periander of
Corinth: (Ὅρα τὸ μέλλον, hora to mellon).
“He that hath ears to hear, let him hear…”
Further
reading:
