Thursday, June 1, 2017

Of Tyrants & Wisdom


~by David Aiken~

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?].
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.

[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
.]

§ 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:

·      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sages_of_Greece--The Seven Sages

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