"The four roots of all things first do thou hear--
Fire, water, earth, and ether's boundless height:
For of these all that was, is, shall be, comes."
And Plato having said, "Wherefore also the gods, knowing men, release sooner from life those they value most," Menander wrote:--
"Whom the gods love, dies young."
And Euripides having written in the OEnomaus:--
"We judge of things obscure from what we see;"
and in the Phoenix:--
"By signs the obscure is fairly grasped,"--
Hyperides says, "But we must investigate things unseen by learning from signs and probabilities." And Isocrates having said, "We must conjecture the future by the past," Andocides does not shrink from saying, "For we must make use of what has happened previously as signs in reference to what is to be." Besides, Theognis having said:--
"The evil of counterfeit silver and gold is not intolerable,
O Cyrnus, and to a wise man is not difficult of detection;
But if the mind of a friend is hidden in his breast,
If he is false, [3227] and has a treacherous heart within,
This is the basest thing for mortals, caused by God,
And of all things the hardest to detect,"--
Euripides writes:--
"Oh Zeus, why hast thou given to men clear tests
Of spurious gold, while on the body grows
No mark sufficing to discover clear
The wicked man?"
Hyperides himself also says, "There is no feature of the mind impressed on the countenance of men."
Again, Stasinus having composed the line:--
"Fool, who, having slain the father, leaves the children,"--
Xenophon [3228] says, "For I seem to myself to have acted in like manner, as if one who killed the father should spare his children." And Sophocles having written in the Antigone:--
"Mother and father being in Hades now,
No brother ever can to me spring forth,"--
Herodotus says, "Mother and father being no more, I shall not have another brother." In addition to these, Theopompus having written:--
"Twice children are old men in very truth;"
And before him Sophocles in Peleus:--
"Peleus, the son of Æacus, I, sole housekeeper,
Guide, old as he is now, and train again,
For the aged man is once again a child,"--
Antipho the orator says, "For the nursing of the old is like the nursing of children." Also the philosopher Plato says, "The old man then, as seems, will be twice a child." Further, Thucydides having said, "We alone bore the brunt at Marathon," [3229] --Demosthenes said, "By those who bore the brunt at Marathon." Nor will I omit the following. Cratinus having said in the Pytine: [3230] --
"The preparation perchance you know,"
Andocides the orator says, "The preparation, gentlemen of the jury, and the eagerness of our enemies, almost all of you know." Similarly also Nicias, in the speech on the deposit, against Lysias, says, "The preparation and the eagerness of the adversaries, ye see, O gentlemen of the jury." After him Æschines says, "You see the preparation, O men of Athens, and the line of battle." Again, Demosthenes having said, "What zeal and what canvassing, O men of Athens, have been employed in this contest, I think almost all of you are aware;" and Philinus similarly, "What zeal, what forming of the line of battle, gentlemen of the jury, have taken place in this contest, I think not one of you is ignorant." Isocrates, again, having said, "As if she were related to his wealth, not him," Lysias says in the Orphics, "And he was plainly related not to the persons, but to the money." Since Homer also having written:--
"O friend, if in this war, by taking flight,
We should from age and death exemption win,
I would not fight among the first myself,
Nor would I send thee to the glorious fray;
But now--for myriad fates of death attend
In any case, which man may not escape
Or shun--come on. To some one we shall bring
Renown, or some one shall to us," [3231] --
Theopompus writes, "For if, by avoiding the present danger, we were to pass the rest of our time in security, to show love of life would not be wonderful. But now, so many fatalities are incident to life, that death in battle seems preferable." And what? Child the sophist having uttered the apophthegm, "Become surety, and mischief is at hand," did not Epicharmus utter the same sentiment in other terms, when he said, "Suretyship is the daughter of mischief, and loss that of suretyship?" [3232] Further, Hippocrates the physician having written, "You must look to time, and locality, and age, and disease," Euripides says in Hexameters: [3233] --
"Those who the healing art would practice well,
Must study people's modes of life, and note
The soil, and the diseases so consider."
Homer again, having written:--
"I say no mortal man can doom escape,"--
Archinus says, "All men are bound to die either sooner or later;" and Demosthenes, "To all men death is the end of life, though one should keep himself shut up in a coop."
And Herodotus, again, having said, in his discourse about Glaucus the Spartan, that the Pythian said, "In the case of the Deity, to say and to do are equivalent," Aristophanes said:--
"For to think and to do are equivalent."
And before him, Parmenides of Elea said:--
"For thinking and being are the same."
And Plato having said, "And we shall show, not absurdly perhaps, that the beginning of love is sight; and hope diminishes the passion, memory nourishes it, and intercourse preserves it;" does not Philemon the comic poet write:--
"First all see, then admire;
Then gaze, then come to hope;
And thus arises love?"
Further, Demosthenes having said, "For to all of us death is a debt," and so forth, Phanocles writes in Loves, or The Beautiful:--
"But from the Fates' unbroken thread escape
Is none for those that feed on earth."
You will also find that Plato having said, "For the first sprout of each plant, having got a fair start, according to the virtue of its own nature, is most powerful in inducing the appropriate end;" the historian writes, "Further, it is not natural for one of the wild plants to become cultivated, after they have passed the earlier period of growth;" and the following of Empedocles:--
"For I already have been boy and girl,
And bush, and bird, and mute fish in the sea,"--
Euripides transcribes in Chrysippus:--
"But nothing dies
Of things that are; but being dissolved,
One from the other,
Shows another form."
And Plato having said, in the Republic, that women were common, Euripides writes in the Protesilaus:--
"For common, then, is woman's bed."
Further, Euripides having written:--
"For to the temperate enough sufficient is"--
Epicurus expressly says, "Sufficiency is the greatest riches of all."
Again, Aristophanes having written:--
"Life thou securely shalt enjoy, being just
And free from turmoil, and from fear live well,"--
Epicurus says, "The greatest fruit of righteousness is tranquillity."
Let these species, then, of Greek plagiarism of sentiments, being such, stand as sufficient for a clear specimen to him who is capable of perceiving.
And not only have they been detected pirating and paraphrasing thoughts and expressions, as will be shown; but they will also be convicted of the possession of what is entirely stolen. For stealing entirely what is the production of others, they have published it as their own; as Eugamon of Cyrene did the entire book on the Thesprotians from Musæus, and Pisander of Camirus the Heraclea of Pisinus of Lindus, and Panyasis of Halicarnassus, the capture of OEchalia from Cleophilus of Samos.
You will also find that Homer, the great poet, took from Orpheus, from the Disappearance of Dionysus, those words and what follows verbatim:--
"As a man trains a luxuriant shoot of olive." [3234]
And in the Theogony, it is said by Orpheus of Kronos:--
"He lay, his thick neck bent aside; and him
All-conquering Sleep had seized."
These Homer transferrred to the Cyclops. [3235] And Hesiod writes of Melampous:--
"Gladly to hear, what the immortals have assigned
To men, the brave from cowards clearly marks;"
and so forth, taking it word for word from the poet Musæus.
And Aristophanes the comic poet has, in the first of the Thesmophoriazusæ, transferred the words from the Empiprameni of Cratinus. And Plato the comic poet, and Aristophanes in Dædalus, steal from one another. Cocalus, composed by Araros, [3236] the son of Aristophanes, was by the comic poet Philemon altered, and made into the comedy called Hypobolimoens.
Eumelus and Acusilaus the historiographers changed the contents of Hesiod into prose, and published them as their own. Gorgias of Leontium and Eudemus of Naxus, the historians, stole from Melesagoras. And, besides, there is Bion of Proconnesus, who epitomized and transcribed the writings of the ancient Cadmus, and Archilochus, and Aristotle, and Leandrus, and Hellanicus, and Hecatæus, and Androtion, and Philochorus. Dieuchidas of Megara transferred the beginning of his treatise from the Deucalion of Hellanicus. I pass over in silence Heraclitus of Ephesus, who took a very great deal from Orpheus.
From Pythagoras Plato derived the immortality of the soul; and he from the Egyptians. And many of the Platonists composed books, in which they show that the Stoics, as we said in the beginning, and Aristotle, took the most and principal of their dogmas from Plato. Epicurus also pilfered his leading dogmas from Democritus. Let these things then be so. For life would fail me, were I to undertake to go over the subject in detail, to expose the selfish plagiarism of the Greeks, and how they claim the discovery of the best of their doctrines, which they have received from us.
[3198] Odyss., xi. 427.
[3199] Homer, Iliad, xxiii. 315: meg' ameinon is found in the Iliad as in Musæus. In the text occurs instead periginetai, which is taken from line 318.
"By art rather than strength is the woodcutter greatly superior;
By art the helmsman on the dark sea
Guides the swift ship when driven by winds;
By art one charioteer excels (periginetai) another. Iliad, xxiii. 315-318.
[3200] phullon, for which Sylburg, suggests phulon.
[3201] Iliad, vi. 147-149.
[3202] Odyss., xxii. 412.
[3203] Iliad, ix. 116.
[3204] Xunos. So Livy, "communis Mars;" and Cicero, "cum omnis belli Mars comunis."
[3205] Iliad, xviii. 309.
[3206] Xunos. So Livy, "communis Mars;" and Cicero, "cum omnis belli Mars comunis."
[3207] The text has: Nikes anthropoisi theon ek peirata keitai. In Iliad, vii. 101, 102, we read:
autar uhuerthen
Nikes peirat' echontai en athanatoisi theoisin.
[3208] Iliad, xvi. 235.
[3209] Odyss., xiv. 228.
[3210] The text is corrupt and unintelligible. It has been restored as above.
[3211] In some lost tragedy.
[3212] Said by Ajax of the sword received from Hector, with which he killed himself.
[3213] The imitator of Thucydides, said to be weaker but clearer than his model. He is not specially clear here.
[3214] The text has, asphalestera para doxan kai kakopragian: for which Lowth reads, episphalestera pros kakopragian, as translated above.
[3215] Iliad, xxiv. 44, 45. Clement's quotation differs somewhat from the passage as it stands in Homer.
[3216] The text has doie, which Stobæus has changed into d' ise, as above. Stobæus gives this quotation as follows:--
"The bastard has equal strength with the legitimate;
Each good thing has its nature legitimate."
[3217] As no play bearing this name is mentioned by any one else, various conjectures have been made as to the true reading; among which are Clymene Temenos or Temenides.
[3218] Odyss., xiv. 187.
[3219] [See, supra, book ii. cap. ii. p. 242.] In Theognis the quotation stands thus:--
Hoinon toi pinein poulon kakon en de tis auton
Pine epistamenos, ou kakos all' agathos.
"To drink much wine is bad; but if one drink
It with discretion, 'tis not bad, but good."
[3220] From Jupiter's address (referring to Pandora) to Prometheus, after stealing fire from heaven. The passage in Hesiod runs thus:--
"You rejoice at stealing fire and outwitting my mind:
But I will give you, and to future men, a great plague.
And for the fire will give to them a bane in which
All will delight their heart, embracing their own bane."
[3221] Translated as arranged by Grotius.
[3222] Odyss., xvii. 286.
[3223] summanenai is doubtless here the true reading, for which the text has sumbenai.
[3224] The text has kat' alla. And although Sylburgius very properly remarks, that the conjecture katallela instead is uncertain, it is so suitable to the sense here, that we have no hesitation in adopting it.
[3225] The above is translated as amended by Grotius.
[3226] pauroisi, "few," instead of parhoisi and prassontas instead of prassonta, and duais, "calamities," instead of dua, are adopted from Lyric Fragments.
[3227] psudnos = psudros--which, however, occurs nowhere but here--is adopted as preferable to psednos (bald), which yields no sense, or psuchros. Sylburgius ms. Paris; Ruhnk reads psudros.
[3228] A mistake for Herodotus.
[3229] Instead of Marathonitai, as in the text, we read from Thucydides Marathoni te.
[3230] Putine (not, as in the text, Poitine), a flask covered with plaited osiers. The name of a comedy by Cratinus (Liddell and Scott's Lexicon). [Elucidation I.]
[3231] Iliad, xii. 322, Sarpedon to Glaucus.