And from this circumstance, people have called his dialogues leathern ones. But he has written thirty-three which, however, are all combined in one volume: On the Gods; on the Good; on the Honorable; what the Honorable is; the first Dialogue on Justice; the second Dialogue on Justice; on Virtue, showing that it is not to be taught; the first Dialogue on Courage; the second; the third; on Laws; on the Art of Guiding the People; on Honor; on Poetry; on Good Health; on Love; on Philosophy; on Knowledge; on Music; on Poetry; on what the Honorable is; on Teaching; on Conversation; on Judgment; on the Existent; on Number; on Diligence; on Activity; on Covetousness; on Insolence; on the Honorable; Some also add to these dialogues; on taking Counsel; on Reason or Suitableness; on doing Harm.
He is, as some people say, the first writer who reduced the conversations of Socrates into the form of dialogues. And when Pericles offered to provide for him, and invited him to come to him, he said that he would not sell his freedom of speech.
There was also another Simon, who wrote a treatise on Oratorical Art. And another, who was a physician in the time of Seleucus Nicanor. And another, who was a statuary.
Glauco was an Athenian; and there are nine dialogues of his extant, which are all contained in one volume: The Phidylus; the Euripides; the Amyntichias; the Euthias; the Lysithides; the Aristophanes; the Cephalus; the Anaxiphemus; the Menexenus. There are thirty-two others which go under his name, but they are spurious.
Simias was a Theban; and there are twenty-three dialogues of his extant, contained in one single volume: On Wisdom; on Ratiocination; on Music; on Verses; on Fortitude; on Philosophy; on Truth; on Letters; on Teaching; on Art; on Government; on what is Becoming; on what is Eligible, and what Proper to be Avoided; on A Friend; on Knowledge; on the Soul; on Living Well; on what is Possible; on Money; on Life; on what the Honorable is; on Industry; and on Love.
Cebes was a Theban, and there are three dialogues of his extant: The Tablet; the Seventh; and the Phrynichus.
This Menedemus was one of those who belonged to the school of Phaedo; and he was one of those who are called Theopropidae, being the son of Clisthenes, a man of noble family but a poor man and a builder. And some say that he was a tentmaker, and that Menedemus himself learned both trades. On which account, when he on one occasion brought forward a motion for some decree, a man of the name of Alexinius attacked him, saying that a wise man had no need to draw a tent nor a decree.
But when Menedemus was sent by the Eretrians to Megara, as one of the garrison, he deserted the rest, and went to the Academy to Plato; and being charmed by him, he abandoned the army altogether. And when Asclepiades the Phliasian drew him over to him, he went and lived in Megara near Stilpo, and they both became his disciples. And from thence they sailed to Elis, where they joined Anchipylus and Moschus, who belonged to Phaedo’s school. And up to this time, as I have already mentioned in my account of Phaedo, they were called Eleans; and they were also called Eretrians, from the native country of Menedemus, of whom I am now speaking.
Now Menedemus appears to have been a very severe and rigid man, on which account Crates, parodying a description, speaks of him thus:
And Asclepiades the sage of Phlius, And the Eretrian bull.
And Timon mentions him thus:
Rise up, you frowning, bristling, frothy sage.
And he was a man of such excessive rigour of principle that when Eurylochus of Cassandrea had been invited by Antigonus, to come to him in company with Cleippides, a youth of Cyzicus, he refused to go, for he was afraid lest Menedemus should hear of it; for he was very severe in his reproofs, and very free spoken. Accordingly, when a young man behaved with boldness towards him, he did not say a word, but took a bit of stick and drew on the floor an insulting picture; until the young man, perceiving the insult that was meant in the presence of numbers of people, went away. And when Hierocles, the governor of the Piraeus, attacked him in the temple of Amphiaraus, and said a great deal about the taking of Eretria, he made no other reply beyond asking him what Antigonus’s object was in treating him as he did.
On another occasion, he said to a profligate man who was giving himself airs: “Do not you know that the cabbage is not the only plant that has a pleasant juice, but that radishes have it also?” And once, hearing a young man talk very loudly, he said: “See whom you have behind you.” When Antigonus consulted him whether he should go to a certain revel, he made no answer beyond desiring those who brought him the message to tell him that he was the son of a king. When a stupid fellow once said something at random to him, he asked him whether he had a farm; and when he said that he had, and a large stock of cattle, he said: “Go then and look after them, lest, if you neglect them, you lose them, and that elegant rusticity of yours with them.” He was once asked whether a good man should marry, and his reply was: “Do I seem to you to be a good man, or not?” and when the other said he did; “Well,” said he, “and I am married.” On one occasion a person said that there were a great many good things, so he asked him how many; and whether he thought that there were more than a hundred. And as he could not bear the extravagance of one man who used frequently to invite him to dinner, once when he was invited he did not say a single word, but admonished him of his extravagance in silence, by eating nothing but olives.
On account then of the great freedom of speech in which he indulged, he was very near while in Cyprus, at the court of Nicocreon, being in great danger with his friend Asclepiades. For when the king was celebrating a festival at the beginning of the month, and had invited them as he did all the other philosophers, Menedemus said: “If the assemblage of such men as are met here today is good, a festival like this ought to be celebrated every day: but if it is not good, even once is too often.” And as the tyrant made answer to this speech, “that he kept this festival in order to have leisure in it to listen to the philosophers,” he behaved with even more austerity than usual, arguing, even while the feast was going on, that it was right on every occasion to listen to philosophers; and he went on in this way till, if a flute-player had not interrupted their discussion, they would have been put to death. In reference to which, when they were overtaken by a storm in a ship, they say that Asclepiades said, “that the fine playing of a flute-player had saved them, but the freedom of speech of Menedemus had ruined them.”
But he was, they say, inclined to depart a good deal from the usual habits and discipline of a school, so that he never regarded any order, nor were the seats arranged around properly, but everyone listened to him while lecturing, standing up or sitting down, just as he might chance to be at the moment, Menedemus himself setting the example of this irregular conduct.
But in other respects it is said that he was a nervous man, and very fond of glory; so that, as previously he and Asclepiades had been fellow journeymen of a builder, when Asclepiades was naked on the roof carrying mortar, Menedemus would stand in front of him to screen him when he saw anyone coming.
When he applied himself to politics he was so nervous that once, when setting down the incense, he actually missed the incense burner. And on one occasion, when Crates was standing by him, and reproaching him for meddling with politics, he ordered some men to put him in prison. But he, even then, continued not the less to watch him as he passed, and to stand on tiptoe and call him Agamemnon and Hegesipolis.
He was also in some degree superstitious. Accordingly, once, when he was at an inn with Asclepiades, and had unintentionally eaten some meat that had been thrown away, when he was told of it he became sick, and turned pale, until Asclepiades rebuked him, telling him that it was not the meat itself which disturbed him, but only the idea that he had adopted. But in other respects he was a high minded man, with notions such as became a gentleman.
As to his habit of body, even when he was an old man he retained all the firmness and vigour of an athlete, with firm flesh, and a ruddy complexion, and very stout and fresh looking. In stature he was of moderate size; as is plain from the statue of him which is at Eretria, in the Old Stadium. For he is there represented seated almost naked, undoubtedly for the purpose of displaying the greater part of his body.
He was very hospitable and fond of entertaining his friends; and because Eretria was unhealthy, he used to have a great many parties, particularly of poets and musicians. And he was very fond of Aratus and Lycophon the tragic poet, and Antagoras of Rhodes. And above all he applied himself to the study of Homer; and next to him to that of the Lyric poets; then to Sophocles, and also to Achaeus, to whom he assigned the second place as a writer of satiric dramas, giving Aeschylus the first. And it is from Achaeus that he quoted these verses against the politicians of the opposite party:
A speedy runner once was overtaken By weaker men than he. An eagle too, Was beaten by a tortoise in a race.
And these lines are out of the satiric play of Achaeus, called Omphale; so that they are mistaken who say that he had never read anything but the Medea of Euripides, which is found, they add, in the collection of Neophron, the Sicyonian.
Of masters of philosophy, he used to despise Plato and Xenocrates, and Paraebates of Cyrene; and admired no one but Stilpo. And once, being questioned about him, he said nothing more of him than that he was a gentleman.
Menedemus was not easy to be understood, and in his conversation he was hard to argue against; he spoke on every subject, and had a great deal of invention and readiness. But he was very disputatious, as Antisthenes says in his Successions; and he used to put questions of this sort, “Is one thing different from another thing?”—“Yes.”—“And is benefiting a person something different from the good?”—“Yes.”—“Then the good is not benefiting a person.” And he, as it is said, discarded all negative axioms, using none but affirmative ones; and of these he only approved of the simple ones, and rejected all that were not simple; saying that they were intricate and perplexing. But Heraclides says that in his doctrines he was a thorough disciple of Plato, and that he scorned dialectics; so that once when Alexinus asked him whether he had left off beating his father, he said, “I have not beaten him, and I have not left off;” and when he said further that he ought to put an end to the doubt by answering explicitly yes or no, “It would be absurd,” he rejoined, “to comply with your conditions, when I can stop you at the entrance.”