Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers: 88. Critias of Athens

I must stay: I cannot betray a comrade.

Heracl.

You speak worthily of yourself and Athens, for you always help the unfortunate. It is disgraceful to me to have an excuse to go home. For how do you think Eurystheus would rejoice if he heard that I had helped you in this, to be able to say that the toil had been undergone in vain?

Theseus

Well, for what you wish you have everywhere my goodwill, not under compulsion but freely, (goodwill) hostile to foes, kindly to friends. . . .

(The rest is too much mutilated for restoration).

16. (Aeacus in Hades, to Heracles): Ha, what is this? I see someone hurrying thither with confident mind. Tell me truly, stranger, who are you who approach these regions, and for what reason?

(Heracles replies): I have no hesitation in disclosing the whole tale. My native land is Argos, my name is Heracles, I am the son of Zeus, father of all the gods; for Zeus came to my mother's marriage-bed, as is said in truth. I come here perforce, obeying the commands of Eurystheus, who sent me to fetch the hound of hell alive to the gates of Mycenae, and he thought that in this he had invented a task impossible for

42. (From 'On the Nature of Love', or 'of the Virtues'): He is bad-tempered who is vexed over trifles, and over big things either more than other men, or for a longer time.

43. (Title: 'Popular Prooemia').

(From unspecified prose works)

44. (Critias, blaming Archilochus for vilifying himself, says): Otherwise, if he had not published this view of himself in Greece, we should not have known either that he was the son of Enîpô, a slave-woman, nor that he left Paros because of poverty and destitution and went to Thasos, nor that when there he was on bad terms with the inhabitants, nor that he vilified friends and foes equally. Moreover, we would not have known that he was an adulterer, nor lustful and violent, if we had not learnt it from him, and—most disgraceful of all—that he threw away his shield. So that Archilochus was not a good witness for himself, leaving behind such a reputation and such a name.

45. (Before Themistocles took up politics, he had an inheritance of three talents; when he was banished and his property confiscated, he was found to have one hundred talents. So too Clean had nothing of his own before he entered politics, but afterwards he left behind a property of fifty talents).

46, 47. (Comparison of Critias’ style with that of Xenophon).

48. A feminine form is the greatest beauty in men; in women, the opposite.

49. Nothing is certain, except that having been born we die, and that in life one cannot avoid disaster.

50. (Homer's father was a river).

Footnotes