WHO’S THE WISEST OF THEM ALL?

In my last entry on Pittacus, I mentioned that Herodotus in one place of his Histories reports a confusion as to the identity of one of the characters he discusses, which could be either Pittacus or Bias of Priene. This is not a single case of mistaken or confused identity, involving Bias. The earlier-told legend of the Golden (or Brazen, in this account) Tripod, awarded to the wisest of them all, changes when it is told about Bias, as he is the one who gets the trophy as the wisest, but forfeits it to the god Apollo, saying: “Apollo is the wisest!” Russell is silent about him, and Webster’s Biographical Dictionary gives him only a perfunctory mention as one of the Seven Sages of Greece.

As far as I am concerned, mistaken identities and same legends told about different people serve as generic group portraits, and reveal virtually nothing of the specific person’s individuality. It is impossible to mix up Solon, for instance, with anybody else. By the same token the strikingly simple phrase “It is a hard thing to be a good man” sets Pittacus apart from all others, at least in my estimation. In order for someone to catch our attention, he must prove his peculiar originality to us, or else, our attention will skip him altogether. So, Bias of Priene,--- prove yourself to us!

Herodotus makes another mention of Bias, where this time there is no ambiguity about his identity. Bias is giving good advice to the hard-pressed Ionians to the effect that, in order to avoid defeat and subjection at the hands of a superior enemy, they “should set forth in one common expedition and sail to Sardinia, and after that they should found a single city for all the Ionians. Thus they would escape subjection and would be prosperous, inhabiting the largest of all islands and being rulers over others.” I wonder, however, that on the basis of just one such rather broad and non-specific advice its giver can qualify for greatness above all others, for this is where the whole thing is going. Bias’s biographer Diogenes Laertius, on the authority of the peripatetic philosopher and biographer Satyrus, identifies Bias as “the wisest” of all the Seven Sages of Greece. The problem here is not that Satyrus is hardly a very reliable source of information, and neither is Diogenes, to be honest, but that the claim of Bias’s wisdom finds little substantiation here or anywhere. It is Diogenes who supplies us with the mandatory bits of Bias’s wisdom. (That is, in order to qualify as one of the Seven, you had to have one or more of those!) And here they all are:---

The naïve men are easily fooled. (Isn’t this a truism, by definition?)

Most people are evil. (A variant: All men are wicked. Here is your first hardboiled cynic!)

It is difficult to bear a change of fortune for the worse with magnanimity. (I am ready not to call this a truism.)

Choose the course you adopt with deliberation; but once adopted, persevere in it with firmness. (Does that mean that at a certain point one must become inflexible and firmly opposed to a change of course? I would say, an advice like this must be taken with a lot of deliberation, and by no means blindly followed!))

Do not speak fast, for that shows folly. (I actually like this one, but does it rise to the level of greatness?)

Love prudence. (Another one which is fair, but undistinguished by itself.)

Speak of the Gods as they are. (Honestly, I am not sure what this means…)

Do not praise an undeserving man because of his riches. (Perhaps, the best of the lot, but still not quite all there.)

Accept of things, having procured them by persuasion, not by force. (It is disingenuous to dismiss force as an effective means of achieving one’s goal, but persuasion is undoubtedly more fun!)

Cherish wisdom as a means of traveling from youth to old age: it is more lasting than any other possession. (I would put it differently: in our travel from youth to old age, wisdom is not our luggage or transportation means; it is actually our point of destination. Some arrive there, some do not, but it is always a late arrival at best.)

And now, here comes his by far most famous saying (courtesy of its Latin translation, made by Cicero with a proper attribution to Bias and known to any educated person, although usually without the proper attribution), and the circumstances of him uttering it. This heavenly spark of genius is “Omnia mea mecum porto” and it is truly worthy of immortality! And now, the circumstances:

They say that when the city of Priene was on the verge of falling to the Persians, and the citizens took flight from it, burdened by numerous belongings, they saw Bias walking empty-handed, and they asked him (not without some deep envy, I daresay) why he was not carrying his stuff with him, to which propitious cue he of course uttered his immortal phrase, indicating that everything of his that was worth having was already being carried… in his head.

There is also this touching story of his death, of how already an old man, he was pleading a case for a client in court, and won it, and how his happy client and some others turned to him to thank him and celebrate the victory, but found Bias sitting with a happy expression on his face… dead. What a beautiful death!