This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Table of Contents:
Click on a word to bring up parses, dictionary entries, and frequency statistics
ὁ Σαραπίων ‘ἐπιεικέστερα ταῦτ᾽’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ Βόηθε, καὶ μουσικώτερα
δεῖ γὰρ μὴ μάχεσθαι πρὸς τὸν θεὸν 1 μηδ᾽ ἀναιρεῖν μετὰ τῆς μαντικῆς
ἅμα τὴν πρόνοιαν καὶ τὸ θεῖον, ἀλλὰ τῶν
ὑπεναντιοῦσθαι δοκούντων λύσεις ἐπιζητεῖν τὴν δ᾽ εὐσεβῆ καὶ πάτριον μὴ
προΐεσθαι πίστιν.’
‘ ὀρθῶς’ ἔφην ἐγὼ λέγεις, ‘ἄριστε Σαραπίων οὐδὲ γὰρ φιλοσοφίαν
ἀπεγιγνώσκομεν ὡς ἀνῃρημένην παντάπασι, καὶ διεφθορυῖαν, ὅτι πρότερον μὲν ἐν ποιήμασιν ἐξέφερον οἱ φιλόσοφοι τὰ δόγματα
καὶ τοὺς λόγους, ὥσπερ Ὀρφεὺς καὶ Ἡσίοδος καὶ Παρμενίδης καὶ
Ξενοφάνης καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ Θαλῆς: ὕστερον δ᾽ ἐπαύσαντο καὶ
πέπαυνται χρώμενοι μέτροις πλὴν σοῦ: [p. 50] διὰ σοῦ δ᾽ αὖθις
εἰς φιλοσοφίαν ποιητικὴ κάτεισιν, ὄρθιον καὶ γενναῖον ἐγκελευομένη τοῖς
νέοις. οὐδ᾽ ἀστρολογίαν ἀδοξοτέραν ἐποίησαν οἱ περὶ Ἀρίσταρχον καὶ
Τιμόχαριν καὶ Ἀρίστυλλον καὶ Ἵππαρχον
καταλογάδην γράφοντες, ἐν μέτροις πρότερον Εὐδόξου καὶ Ἡσιόδου καὶ
Θαλοῦ γραφόντων, εἴ γε Θαλῆς ἐποίησεν, ὡς ἀληθῶς εἰπεῖν, τὴν εἰς αὐτὸν 2
ἀναφερομένην Ἀστρολογίαν. Πίνδαρος δὲ καὶ περὶ τρόπου
μελῳδίας ἀμελουμένου : καθ᾽ αὑτὸν ἀπορεῖν
ὁμολογεῖ, καὶ θαυμάζειν 3 ὅτι ... 4 οὐδὲν γάρ ἐστι δεινὸν οὐδ᾽ ἄτοπον
αἰτίας ζητεῖν τῶν τοιούτων μεταβολῶν ἀναιρεῖν δὲ τὰς τέχνας καὶ τὰς
δυνάμεις, ἄν τι κινηθῇ καὶ παραλλάξῃ τῶν κατὰ ταύτας, οὐ δίκαιον.
’
Plutarch. Moralia. Gregorius N. Bernardakis. Leipzig. Teubner. 1891. 3.
The National Endosment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This text was converted to electronic form by optical character recognition and has been proofread to a high level of accuracy.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.