Sidelights on Greek Philosophers

Abstract

When, towards the close of 1897, I, a freshman of St. John's College, Oxford, first met David Ross of Balliol in the room of a common friend, I little dreamed how long and how closely we should be associated in the life and work of another Oxford college and how immeasurably I should be enriched by his example, his help and his friendship. So I welcome wholeheartedly this opportunity of acknowledging, since I cannot repay, my debt by making a contribution, however slight, to the tribute of admiration, affection and good wishes embodied in this volume. Much of his time and ability has been devoted to the study and elucidation of the works of the Greek philosophers, and I offer him,γλαῦκ᾽ εἰς Ἀθήνας, some notes, which lay no claim to completeness, on the light thrown on that study by Greek inscriptions.We regard the rise and development of philosophy as one of the supreme achievements of the Greeks, which has permanently and profoundly affected Western civilisation. Did the later Greeks share this view? Inscriptions offer some evidence which merits consideration. The author of the Parian Chronicle, who is for us, owing to the mutilation of the stone, anonymous, compiled a chronological table of the outstanding personalities and events in Greek history down to 264–3 B.C. The extant record is fairly complete from 1581–80 to 355–4 B.C. and again from 336–5 to 299–8, and if we examine the period after 1000 B.C. we are struck by the predominance of Greek tyrants and foreign potentates in the sphere of political and military history and of poets (prose authors are ignored) in the realm of culture; Terpander of Lesbos (A34) is the sole representative of music and Callippus, the astronomer (B6), of natural science, while sculptors, painters and architects are passed over in silence. Philosophy appears only in the persons of Socrates, Anaxagoras and Aristotle; a brief reference to two of these,is tacked on as an afterthought to the record (A60) of Euripides' first victory in 442–1 B.C., and the death of ‘Socrates the philosopher’ at the age of 70 is reported (A66) under the date 400–399, while in a paragraph (B11) relating to events in Asia Minor and Egypt in 321–20 B.C. occurs the phraseA fragment of another chronological table, drawn up in A.D. 15–16, survives in Rome and gives rather more recognition to philosophy; S[olon], Anacharsis, the Seven Sages and Aesop are mentioned in B2, 4 and 5, B7 tells of Pythagoras's capture by Cambyses in Egypt in 524–3, and B10 runs:where the year is unfortunately lost.