Kitap 4
7.51
Prudence, he said, excels the other virtues as much as sight excels the other senses. He used to say that we ought not to heap reproaches on old age, seeing that, as he said, we all hope to reach it. To a slanderer who showed a grave face his words were, I don’t know whether you have met with ill luck, or your neighbour with good. He used to say that low birth made a bad partner for free speech, for— It cows a man, however bold his heart.Eur. Hipp. 424. We ought, he remarked, to watch our friends and see what manner of men they are, in order that we may not be thought to associate with the bad or to decline the friendship of the good.
7.51
Bion at the outset used to deprecate the Academic doctrines,i.e. he had his doubts. Reiske, however, by his conjecture προῄρητο gives the statement a totally different turn, viz. that Bion had at the outset preferred the Academy. even at the time when he was a pupil of Crates. Then he adopted the Cynic discipline, donning cloak and wallet.
7.52
For little else was needed to convert him to the doctrine of entire insensibility. Next he went over to Theodorean views, after he had heard the lectures of Theodorus the Atheist, who used every kind of sophistical argument. And after Theodorus he attended the lectures of Theophrastus the Peripatetic. He was fond of display and great at cutting up anything with a jest, using vulgar names for things. Because he employed every style of speech in combination, Eratosthenes, we hear, said of him that he was the first to deck philosophy with bright-flowered robes. He was clever also at parody. Here is a specimen of his style: O gentle Archytas, musician-born, blessed in thine own conceit, most skilled of men to stir the bass of strife.Cf. Hom. Il. iii. 182 ὦ μάκαρ Ἀτρεΐδη, μοιρηγενές, ὀλβιόδαιμον. The address πάντων ἐκπαγλότατ’ ἀνδρῶν occurs in Il. i. 146 and xviii. 170.
