Footnotes

[694:1] For when he dieth he shall carry nothing away, his glory shall not descend after him.—Psalm xlix. 17.

[[695]]

[These selections from the most famous gnomic sayings of the great tragic writers of Greece—Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides—are chiefly from the fragments and not from their complete plays. The numbers of the fragments refer to the edition of Nauck. They are selected and translated by M. H. Morgan, Ph. D., of Harvard University.]

ÆSCHYLUS.  525-456 b. c.

I would far rather be ignorant than wise in the foreboding of evil.[695:1]

Suppliants, 453.

"Honour thy father and thy mother" stands written among the three laws of most revered righteousness.[695:2]

Suppliants, 707.

Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.[695:3]

Prometheus, 378.

Time as he grows old teaches many lessons.

Prometheus, 981.

God's mouth knows not to utter falsehood, but he will perform each word.[695:4]

Prometheus, 1032.

Learning is ever in the freshness of its youth, even for the old.[695:5]

Agamemnon, 584.

Few men have the natural strength to honour a friend's success without envy. . . . I well know that mirror of friendship, shadow of a shade.

Agamemnon, 832.

Exiles feed on hope.

Agamemnon, 1668.

Success is man's god.

Choephoræ, 59.

[[696]]

So in the Libyan fable it is told

That once an eagle, stricken with a dart,

Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft,

"With our own feathers, not by others' hands,

Are we now smitten."[696:1]

Frag. 135 (trans. by Plumptre).

Of all the gods, Death only craves not gifts:

Nor sacrifice, nor yet drink-offering poured

Avails; no altars hath he, nor is soothed

By hymns of praise. From him alone of all

The powers of heaven Persuasion holds aloof.

Frag. 146 (trans. by Plumptre).

O Death the Healer, scorn thou not, I pray,

To come to me: of cureless ills thou art

The one physician. Pain lays not its touch

Upon a corpse.

Frag. 250 (trans. by Plumptre).

A prosperous fool is a grievous burden.

Frag. 383.

Bronze is the mirror of the form; wine, of the heart.

Frag. 384.

It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath.

Frag. 385.