Simonides

Simonides ( c.556 - 468 BC) was a poet of ancient Greece. He was perhaps the first poet to write victory odes, a genre in which Pinder later became most famous. Little of his works are extant except in fragments. His general renown owes much to traditional accounts of his colourful life, as one of the wisest of men; as a greedy miser; as an inventor of a system of mnemonics; and the inventor of some letters of the Greek alphabet (ω, η, ξ, ψ). As a poet, he had a remarkable abilityto present basic human situations with affecting simplicity. He had an influence on the sophistic enlightenment of the Classical era. Only few of his poetry remain, either in the form of papyrus fragments or quotations by ancient literary figures.

Wisdom & Quotes

• The word is the image of the thing.

- attributed by Michael Psellos

• Painting silent poetry and poetry painting that speaks

- attributed by Plutarch

• Dancing is silent poetry.
• I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.

- attributed by Plutarch

• A thousand or ten thousand years are an indeterminable point, or rather the tiniest part of a point.

- attributed by Plutarch

• Go, tell the Spartans, thou who passeth by:

Carrying out their order, here we lie.
-epitaph for the Spartan dead at Thermopylae, quoted in Herodotus, Histories

• Stone is broken even by mortal hands. That was the judgement of a fool.

- in a poem on a maiden sculptured on a tomb imagined to proclaim her eternal vigilance

• Longer I deliberate, the more obscure the matter seems to me.

- On defining God, attributed by Cicero

• Please stop slandering me with your ears!

- attributed by Stobaeus, as reply to a man who had confided in him

• Being a man you cannot tell what might befall when tomorrow comes

Nor yet how long one who appears blessed will remain that way,
So soon our fortunes change even the long-winged fly
Turns around less suddenly.

• For a man it's certainly hard to be truly good—perfect in hands, feet, and mind, built without a single flaw; only a god can have that prize; but a man, there's no way he can help being bad when some crisis that he cannot deal with takes him down. Any man's good when he's doing well in life, bad when he's doing badly, and the best of us are those the gods love most.
• But for me that saying of Pittacus doesn't quite ring true (even though he was a smart man): he says "being good is hard": for me, a man's good enough as long as he's not too lawless, and has the sense of right that does cities good: a solid guy. I won't find fault with a man like that. After all, isn't there a limitless supply of fools? The way I see it, if there's no great shame in it, all's fair.
• So I'm not going to throw away my dole of life on a vain, empty hope, searching for something there cannot be, a completely blameless man—at least not among us mortals who win our bread from the broad earth. (If I do find one, mind you, I'll be sure to let you know.) So long as he does nothing shameful willfully, I give my praise and love to any man. Not even the gods can fight necessity.
• Any man is good when life treats him well, and bad when it treats him badly.
• We are all debts owed to death.
• If you are a simple mortal, do not speak

of tomorrow or how long this man may be
among the happy, for change comes suddenly
like the shifting flight of a dragonfly.

• Without the gods

a man or city can do nothing.
Only God knows everything, and man
suffers for what he does.

There is no evil
man may not expect, and soon
God wipes away the few things
he may have done.

Confucius