Orations by Dio Chrysostom of Prusa

Contents

1. Περὶ βασιλείας Αʹ Oration 1 (On Kingship 1)

   Timotheus the piper once stirred Alexander to arms with Athena's war-tune, and Dio seeks words as bold yet gentle for a ruler both brave and lawful. The true king holds his power from Zeus and governs by Zeus's law; the one who abuses it ends like Phaethon. In a closing myth Hermes shows the young Heracles the peaks of Kingship and Tyranny: he chooses Kingship, Zeus gives him the rule of all mankind, and he still guards the emperor's rule.

2. Περὶ βασιλείας Βʹ Oration 2 (On Kingship 2)

   At Dium in Pieria, where Philip and Alexander have returned from campaign to sacrifice to the Muses, the young Alexander tells his father why Homer is the poet for a king. He reads the Iliad and the Odyssey for their counsel on rule, setting the fragrant, vine-hung cave of Calypso against the walled and well-gated house of Odysseus. Philip, delighted, credits Aristotle with the teaching and recalls allowing him to refound his home town of Stagira.

3. Περὶ βασιλείας Γʹ Oration 3 (On Kingship 3)

   Socrates would not call the Persian king happy without knowing his mind; Dio, addressing the emperor in person, claims to know his, since he prefers frankness to flattery. The speech sets the good king against the tyrant and argues that the psychē toils harder than the body and is the more kingly for it. It ends on the king's hunting, which hardens body and courage, unlike the Persian kings' killing of penned beasts in their parks.

4. Περὶ βασιλείας Δʹ Oration 4 (On Kingship 4)

   Alexander, king of the Macedonians, meets Diogenes, the exile from Sinope, and the Cynic's blunt answers deflate his pride: he cannot be a king in fact until he is rid of vanity and reconciled with his own daimōn. Diogenes soothes him with the Libyan myth, as a nurse tells a story after a beating, then portrays the three daimones that ruin men, the lovers of wealth, of pleasure and of glory, and closes by praising the good and temperate daimōn.

5. Λιβυκὸς μῦθος Oration 5 (The Libyan Myth)

   Dio opens by arguing that a useless myth, given a useful meaning, bears fruit like a wild tree grafted with a cultivated one. His myth tells of Libyan beasts, women to the eye with serpents below, who lured men and devoured them; he reads them as the desires, which tempt with a show of pleasure and destroy. It ends with a later party in the desert, where a youth drawn to one lying on a sand-bank is dragged down and eaten.

6. Διογένης ἢ περὶ τυραννίδος Oration 6 (Diogenes, or On Tyranny)

   Diogenes, exiled from Sinope, likens his seasonal moves between Corinth and Athens to the Persian king's shifts between Babylon, Susa and Ecbatana, and lives by the seasons as cranes, deer and hares do. Against that ease the discourse sets the tyrant, whose power leaves him in constant fear. Diogenes ends by claiming that no earthquake or famine could make him poorer, since barley, vetch and acorns roasted in the ashes are enough to feed him.

7. Εὐβοϊκὸς ἢ κυνηγός Oration 7 (Euboean Discourse, or The Hunter)

   Dio tells how a winter storm cast him ashore on the hollows of Euboea, where a hunter led him to two families living off the land in the hills. He stays for the wedding of their children, after teasing about a pig still to be fattened for the feast. The discourse then turns to the urban poor and the trades they may honestly follow, and closes on brothels and on seducers who move from wives to the city's young men.

8. Διογένης ἢ περὶ Ἀρετῆς Oration 8 (Diogenes, or On Aretē)

   Arriving in Athens an exile, Diogenes finds Plato, Aristippus, Aeschines, Antisthenes and Euclides of Megara, but keeps company only with Antisthenes, whom he calls a trumpet that cannot hear itself; Antisthenes calls him a wasp. Before the crowds Diogenes names pleasure, which bewitches like Circe, as the hardest opponent, and holds up Heracles, who even carried out the dung of Augeas. When he squats down to do something disreputable, the crowd calls him mad and the sophists croak like frogs.

9. Διογένης ἢ Ἰσθμικός Oration 9 (Diogenes, or The Isthmian Discourse)

   At the Isthmian games Diogenes comes not to watch the athletes but to observe the folly of the crowd, barking, as a dog would, at the wrongdoers. Challenged for wearing the pine crown unearned, he claims victory over poverty, exile, anger, fear and pleasure, opponents harder than any wrestler. He humbles a vain winner of the foot race and ends by crowning the horse that stayed after its tethered fellow, kicked to exhaustion, broke loose and fled, proclaiming it Isthmian victor in kicking.

10. Διογένης ἢ περὶ οἰκετῶν Oration 10 (Diogenes, or On Servants)

    On the road from Corinth to Athens Diogenes meets an acquaintance bound for Delphi who has turned back to hunt a runaway slave. He mocks a man who would consult a god when he cannot manage a servant, and argues in short questions that nothing, a horse, a dog, a god or oneself, can be used without knowing how. He ends by reading the Sphinx as ignorance: Oedipus thought himself wise for naming man, and so came to the worst end of all.

11. Τρωϊκὸς ὑπὲρ τοῦ Ἴλιον μὴ ἁλῶναι Oration 11 (Trojan Discourse: That Ilium Was Not Captured)

    Truth is bitter and falsehood sweet, Dio begins, and unteaching a lie believed for generations is hardest of all; he sets out to show the people of Ilium that Homer lied and Troy was never taken. He tests the story point by point, Helen's abduction, the absence of Castor and Polydeuces, Agamemnon's ten years of mustering, and ends by asking how much better for the Greeks it is that the outrages on Cassandra, Priam and Hecuba never happened.

12. Ὀλυμπικὸς ἢ περὶ τῆς πρώτης τοῦ θεοῦ ἐννοίας Oration 12 (Olympic Discourse, or On Man's First Conception of God)

    Likening himself to the owl that other birds flock round for no merit of its own, Dio addresses the gathering at Olympia on how humankind first came to conceive of god. He names the sources of that belief, innate, poetic and legal, and adds a fourth, the art of painters and sculptors. Phidias is then made to defend his statue of Zeus at Olympia, and the god himself seems to reproach Greece, in Homer's words, for her neglected state.

13. Ἐν Ἀθήναις περὶ φυγῆς Oration 13 (In Athens, On Exile)

    Banished for his friendship with a powerful man who was put to death, Dio asks whether exile is the misfortune most people think it. He recounts how in his wanderings he found himself preaching like Socrates: people learn wrestling and music but never how to live justly, though tragedy shows ruin falling on the rich, on Atreus, Agamemnon and Oedipus. He closes with his address to the Romans, where wealth gathered from everywhere feeds luxury as fuel heaped on Patroclus's pyre feeds the fire.

14. Περὶ δουλείας καὶ ἐλευθερίας Αʹ Oration 14 (On Slavery and Freedom 1)

    Everyone wants to be free and dreads slavery, yet few know what either is. In question and answer Dio tests the definition that the free man is the one allowed to do as he wishes, against the sailor, the patient, the pupil and the citizen under law. He ends by mocking the Persian king, who killed anyone else wearing the upright tiara but cared nothing whether his own judgement was upright, and asks whether freedom too needs a felt cap as its badge.

15. Περὶ δουλείας καὶ ἐλευθερίας Βʹ Oration 15 (On Slavery and Freedom 2)

    In a private house a man losing an argument sneers that his opponent is not free. The one insulted asks what makes a slave: birth to slaves, purchase, or capture in war. No one would bar from citizenship the son of Callias, if he did survive capture, though he returned from years of floggings in Thrace. The argument ends by identifying the free with the noble and the slave with the ignoble: the names belong to character, not ancestry.

16. Περὶ λύπης Oration 16 (On Distress)

    Why do people stay enslaved to distress when it only torments them, and even add black clothes, clasped hands and low seats to keep it alive? Dio urges a mind hardened against fortune, as bare feet are toughened by rough roads. Jason, anointed with Medea's drug, passed the dragon and the fire-breathing bulls unharmed: that drug, he says, is wisdom, and without it everything is fire and sleepless dragons.

17. Περὶ πλεονεξίας Oration 17 (On Covetousness)

    Covetousness is condemned by everyone, Dio says, and must still be preached, because people do not act on what they know. He cites the sons of Jocasta, who killed each other over a share of power, and the man who carried off Helen and Menelaus's goods and so destroyed the greatest city in Asia. The discourse closes with Croesus inviting visitors into his treasury to take as much gold as they could carry, and their ludicrous exit, gold-dust in their hair and mouths.

18. Περὶ λόγου ἀσκήσεως Oration 18 (On Training in Speaking)

    Addressed to a wealthy man in his prime who has taken up the study of speaking for a public career, this discourse sets out a course of reading. Beside the poets and historians, it recommends Hyperides, Aeschines and Lycurgus as easier models than the greatest orators, and even recent speakers such as Antipater, Theodorus, Plution and Conon. Dio ends by offering to read aloud with him, since advice teaches best when its giver is seen at work.

19. Περὶ τῆς αὑτοῦ φιληκοΐας Oration 19 (On His Own Fondness for Listening)

    Kept from Prusa by exile, Dio stayed at Cyzicus so that friends and fellow citizens could visit him, and the arrival of the finest lyre-singer of the day drew him to listen. He confesses a weakness for hearing sophists and orators, but prefers singers and actors for their voices and their carefully composed verse. He ends on tragedy, whose iambic parts still hold the stage while the lyrics have dropped away, like the soft flesh of an old body.

20. Περὶ ἀναχωρήσεως Oration 20 (On Retirement)

    The Athenian who slips off to Megara to avoid military service and the rich man who leaves the city to escape public duties are not retiring but running away. Dio argues that withdrawal is a habit of thought, not a change of place: a well-trained hound holds to the scent through every noise and smell. Solitude helps the foolish no more than a crowd, and their idle thoughts are like wind-eggs, or Homer's horses sired by Boreas.

21. Περὶ κάλλους Oration 21 (On Beauty)

    A dialogue that opens in admiration of a tall young man whose looks recall the oldest statues at Olympia, and asks whether male beauty has died out like the lions of Europe. The talk turns to Nero, still longed for and believed alive long after his death, and then to Homer, who describes Hector's looks in detail but says of Achilles only that his hair was fair.

22. Περὶ εἰρήνης καὶ πολέμου Oration 22 (On Peace and War)

    Philosophers and statesmen share many concerns, Dio argues, and one is whether to make war. Orators debate a single case, whether Athens should fight the Peloponnesians or Alexander cross into Asia; philosophers consider in advance when, against whom and on what grounds war is just. Called in as counsellors to cities or kings, they speak from long reflection, not swayed like a scale by anger, rivalry or bribes.

23. Ὅτι εὐδαίμων ὁ σοφός Oration 23 (That the Wise Man Is Happy)

    A question-and-answer dialogue opens on Homer's Zeus, who calls man the most wretched of creatures. Step by step it ties each person's life to the daimōn they live by: the just and temperate have a good one, the wicked, it first seems, a bad one. When the other objects that nothing divine can be wicked, the argument is recast: the sensible obey a good daimōn as they obey their doctors and the wicked do not, so the wise man alone is happy.

24. Περὶ εὐδαιμονίας Oration 24 (On Happiness)

    Most people train hard at riding, wrestling, music or speaking without asking what each is for, or what is best for a person to be. In this short discourse Dio reviews why men seek the skill of speaking, for power, for reputation or for its own sake, and holds that every pursuit is worth little until one has grasped what happiness is: praise from the foolish, power and a pleasant life count for nothing towards it.

25. Περὶ τοῦ Δαίμονος Oration 25 (On the Guardian Daimōn)

    Asked what the philosophers mean by calling only the wise man happy, the speaker first asks what a daimōn is: whatever rules each person, from within or without. He then reviews rulers as the daimones of their peoples: Cyrus freeing the Persians, Cambyses and Darius driving them to hard wars, Philip and Alexander for the Macedonians, Hanno and Hannibal for Carthage, and Numa, the good daimōn of the Romans, who gave them laws, gods and a constitution.

26. Περὶ τοῦ βουλεύεσθαι Oration 26 (On Deliberation)

    Having listened for hours as his hearers deliberated at a politician's house, Dio asks what deliberating is. A puzzle follows, illustrated by guessing where two acquaintances, Charicles and Charixenus, live: no one deliberates about what he knows, nor about what he does not, nor about what does not exist. Since no one ignorant of music, geometry or piloting deliberates well about them, he urges the study of wisdom, so that concord, war, colonies and families are not settled by guesswork.

27. Διατριβὴ περὶ τῶν ἐν συμποσίῳ Oration 27 (Discourse on Banquets)

    People show their character at banquets as at festivals: some come only to drink, and Dionysus fills the unschooled with fire. Dio sets the guests who weary a gathering with recited poems and prose against the philosopher, who falls silent amid the noise. Most people send for a philosopher only in misfortune, to console them for a lost wife, child or brother, as the intemperate call a doctor only when fever strikes.

28. Μελαγκόμας Βʹ, τῇ τάξει Αʹ Oration 28 (Melancomas 1)

    Landing for the games, the narrator goes straight to the gymnasium to watch a tall, handsome young athlete in training. An old man in the crowd names him as Iatrocles, rival of Melancomas, and speaks of Melancomas, the dead boxer who made opponents give up before he was hit or had struck a blow. The narrator calls Melancomas blessed to have died at his peak, like Achilles, Patroclus, Hector, Memnon and Sarpedon, and the old man leaves to train his pupil.

29. Μελαγκόμας Αʹ, τῇ τάξει Βʹ Oration 29 (Melancomas 2)

    Stunned by grief yet bound by his office, the magistrate in charge of the games delivers a funeral speech for his friend Melancomas, the young boxer who died suddenly. He praises his endurance through whole days of bouts in the hottest season, and his rule of winning by wearing opponents down rather than by striking them. He bids the athletes honour him with memory, not tears, unlike Homer's Achaeans who wet the sands with weeping.

30. Χαρίδημος Oration 30 (Charidemus)

    Dio consoles the family of Charidemus, son of Timarchus, with the young man's words on human life: a bleak account, in which the world is a prison where the gods punish the Titans' race; a better one, from a farmer's song, in which mankind is a colony of the gods; and a last, in which the gods' king invites mankind to a feast in the world's house. Dio ends by urging the surviving son to comfort his father.

31. Ῥοδιακός Oration 31 (Rhodian Oration)

    Rhodes honours new benefactors by recutting the names on old bronze statues, and Dio, neither a citizen nor invited, condemns the practice. He argues that erasing a man's name robs the dead of the thanks they earned and is no lighter an offence than damaging the statues themselves. He ends by urging the Rhodians, in a long peace, to live up to their ancestors, as sailors behave well in a storm but grow insolent in calm water.

32. Πρὸς Ἀλεξανδρεῖς Oration 32 (To the Alexandrians)

    The people of Alexandria, Dio tells a vast crowd of them, are never serious: they spend their energy on the theatre, the songs of lyre-players and the frenzy of the races. He sets the oracle the Athenians misread, putting gold rather than learning into their children's ears, against the city's own deafness to good counsel. He closes on the tale of the Egyptian musician who was told in a dream that he would sing into an ass's ears.

33. Ταρσικὸς πρῶτος Oration 33 (First Tarsic Discourse)

    Dio refuses to give the people of Tarsus the praise they expect, of Perseus, Heracles and the river Cydnus, and turns instead on a habit he finds disgraceful: a coarse snorting noise heard in every street of the city, from small boys to grown men. He reads it as a sign of shameless luxury, and ends by mocking men who pluck their bodies smooth to look like boys.

34. Ταρσικὸς δεύτερος Oration 34 (Second Tarsic Discourse)

    May a philosopher in Cynic dress advise a city, as the rich men who usually speak do? Before the assembly at Tarsus Dio claims that right. He warns that Tarsus is quarrelling within itself and is envied or resented by neighbouring cities over land and rank, while the Roman governor's goodwill cannot be taken for granted. Concord at home and moderation abroad are his counsel, and he ends on the charge that philosophers weaken a city's zeal.

35. Ἐν Κελαιναῖς τῆς Φρυγίας Oration 35 (At Celaenae in Phrygia)

    At Celaenae in Phrygia Dio disclaims any display of eloquence and mocks the idea that long hair or a bare body makes a philosopher. He then turns to the city's wealth: its rivers Marsyas, Orgas and Maeander, the peoples who trade there, and the assizes, held there every other year in turn with the leading cities, that crowd it with litigants and hangers-on. The close turns to peoples counted happy, from those who steal gold from the ants to the Byzantines.

36. Βορυσθενιτικός Oration 36 (Borysthenitic Discourse)

    Read out to the people of Prusa, this discourse recalls a summer Dio spent after his exile at Borysthenes, the Greek city on the Hypanis near the Black Sea. Walking by the river, he talks with a young admirer of Homer, then addresses the citizens on the Stoic view that the universe is a city shared by gods and men. It ends with a myth of the Magi on the chariot of Zeus and the making of the world.

37. Κορινθιακός Oration 37 (Corinthian Discourse)

    A speaker who had visited Corinth about ten years earlier complains that the bronze statue the Corinthians set up to him has been taken down. He opens with Arion, saved by a dolphin in Periander's time, and ends by addressing the vanished statue, quoting Sappho and Hesiod on fame. The speech is kept among Dio's orations, but its speaker, a Roman who became Greek and is set up as an example to the Celts, is Favorinus of Arelate.

38. Πρὸς Νικομηδεῖς περὶ ὁμονοίας τῆς πρὸς Νικαεῖς Oration 38 (To the Nicomedians on Concord with the Nicaeans)

    Nicomedia has made Dio a citizen, and he uses his place to urge reconciliation with neighbouring Nicaea. The two cities are quarrelling over which is first in Bithynia, and he asks what that primacy would bring: no tribute, no courts, no governors to send, only a name. He compares the struggle between Athens and Sparta that ruined both, and closes by warning against men who stir up slander between the cities and with a petition that the gods keep them reconciled.

39. Περὶ ὁμονοίας ἐν Νικαίᾳ πεπαυμένης τῆς στάσεως Oration 39 (On Concord in Nicaea after the End of the Faction)

    Nicaea has honoured Dio now that its civil strife is over, and he praises a city founded by leading Greeks and Macedonians, with gods and heroes as founders. He sets out the advantages of a city of one mind, comparing it to a sound body, a ship whose crew agree and a chariot whose horses pull together. He ends with a petition to Dionysus, Heracles, Zeus Polieus, Athena, Aphrodite Philia, Homonoia and Nemesis that the city may stay united.

40. Ἐν τῇ πατρίδι περὶ τῆς πρὸς Ἀπαμεῖς ὁμονοίας Oration 40 (In His Native City, on Concord with the Apameians)

    Home in Prusa after his exile, Dio had hoped to rest and repair his ruined estate, but the building scheme he promised the city and the dispute with neighbouring Apamea draw him back into public life. He argues that no city gains from enmity with neighbours to whom it is joined by marriage and daily dealings. He ends by contrasting the peace kept by ants, bees and mixed herds with the quarrels of men.

41. Πρὸς Ἀπαμεῖς περὶ ὁμονοίας Oration 41 (To the Apameians on Concord)

    The council of Apamea, the Roman colony beside Prusa, had welcomed Dio home from exile by decree, and he thanks it and claims the city as a second native city. He explains why he stood aside from the recent dispute and urges the colonists to imitate the generosity of Rome, which shares its citizenship and laws, by dealing gently with their neighbours. It ends on the blessings of friendship between man and man and between cities.

42. Διάλεξις ἐν τῇ πατρίδι Oration 42 (Address in His Native City)

    Do his fellow citizens want to hear him in earnest or to show him up? Dio cannot tell, and compares himself to animals hunted for some medicinal part rather than their meat. His speeches, he says, are passed from mouth to mouth and improved in the retelling, so that they arrive like the pottery of Tenedos, which every passing ship takes on board and few bring home unbroken.

43. Πολιτικὸς ἐν τῇ πατρίδι Oration 43 (Political Address in His Native City)

    Dio's envious enemies in Prusa draw a defence of his record: he has raised his city's standing, he says, and he cites Epaminondas, who served Thebes and was resented for it. He says he has spoken in court only once, to protect an orphan from relatives and guardians, and compares his position to Socrates' under the Thirty. He then sets out the charges against him, among them collusion with an oppressive governor of the province, and ends ready to answer them, as Socrates answered the Athenians.

44. Φιλοφρονητικὸς πρὸς τὴν πατρίδα εἰσηγουμένην αὐτῷ τιμάς Oration 44 (Address of Goodwill to His Native City, on Its Proposing Honours for Him)

    New honours proposed by Prusa are declined: the goodwill of his fellow citizens is honour enough, Dio says, quoting Homer that nothing is sweeter than one's native land. He recalls the honours already paid to his father, mother and grandparents, and the bees that carry pebbles as ballast to reach their own hive. He ends on true freedom, which a city wins by its own conduct, and offers to read his letter to the emperor and its reply.

45. Ἀπολογισμὸς ὅπως ἔσχηκε πρὸς τὴν πατρίδα Oration 45 (Account of His Conduct toward His Native City)

    An account of his dealings with Prusa, given because he expects little time left at home, covers Dio's exile under a ruler hailed as master and god and the illness that kept him from Nerva. He explains why he kept clear of faction in the recent elections to the council, and how the governor's assembly brought him to speak publicly in favour of the building scheme that later drew opposition.

46. Πρὸ τοῦ φιλοσοφεῖν ἐν τῇ πατρίδι Oration 46 (Before Philosophizing in His Native City)

    Delivered before his exile, when a crowd angered by the price of grain threatened to stone him and burn his house, this speech asks the people of Prusa why they blame him. Dio recalls his father's and grandfather's services to the city, denies hoarding grain or refusing loans, and defends the colonnades and shops he built by the hot springs. He warns that the Roman authorities hear of riots, and proposes electing capable market officers instead.

47. Δημηγορία ἐν τῇ πατρίδι Oration 47 (Public Address in His Native City)

    Why did Zeno, Chrysippus and Cleanthes teach that a man should serve his city yet leave their own? Dio finds the answer in the envy and ingratitude he has met in Prusa. He defends his scheme to rebuild the city with colonnades and finer buildings, and accepts as apt the name of nightingale that a sophist gave him in abuse. He ends by rejecting the charge that he acts like a tyrant: long hair and a beard, he says, mark a king.

48. Πολιτικὸς ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ Oration 48 (Political Address in the Assembly)

    The governor Varenus has let the people of Prusa meet in assembly again, and Dio begins by thanking him, then urges the crowd to receive him well and put aside, for now, their charges over public money. He reminds them how they once praised the men they now attack, and asks them to let those men fulfil their promises. He closes on ants as a model of concord, and on choosing market officials and supporting the new magistrate.

49. Παραίτησις ἀρχῆς ἐν βουλῇ Oration 49 (Refusal of Office in the Council)

    Chosen for office, Dio asks the council of Prusa to release him. Ruling well, he argues, is what a true philosopher trains for, and kings take philosophers as counsellors; harder than ruling a people is ruling oneself against anger, pleasure and fear. At the close he explains that he must leave the city and is not ashamed to ask to be excused.

50. Περὶ τῶν ἔργων ἐν βουλῇ Oration 50 (On the Public Works, in the Council)

    Loyalty to the council of Prusa, which he addresses with no faction behind him, is Dio's theme, and he cites the respect even democratic Athens kept for the Areopagus. He recalls that he never flattered the tyrant under whom he was exiled. He answers rumours that he blocked a meeting of the council and that his son, now in office, does whatever he says, and explains why he has stayed away from its sessions.

51. Πρὸς Διόδωρον Oration 51 (To Diodorus)

    Dio opens on the servility of praising a man one does not love, and on how differently people in Prusa speak in assembly and in the market. He then adds his own praise of Diodorus, to whom the people have given charge of the city's discipline and conduct, a trust he compares favourably with what Athens gave Pericles. The speech ends on the city's readiness to grant honours, statues and embassies to those who serve it.

52. Περὶ Αἰσχύλου καὶ Σοφοκλέους καὶ Εὐριπίδου ἢ περὶ τῶν Φιλοκτήτου τόξων Oration 52 (On Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, or On the Bow of Philoctetes)

    On a summer morning, unwell, Dio drives round the hippodrome, bathes, and reads the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides on the same subject: Odysseus taking the bow of Philoctetes on Lemnos. He compares how each poet handles the plot, the chorus and the deception, praising Euripides' political rhetoric and Aeschylus' grandeur. He ends with Sophocles, whose Neoptolemus returns the bow and agrees to take Philoctetes home until Heracles appears.

53. Περὶ Ὁμήρου Oration 53 (On Homer)

    Democritus' claim that Homer's gift was divine opens a survey of the poet's critics and admirers, from Aristarchus, Crates, Aristotle and Heraclides of Pontus to Plato, who admired the verse but banished it from his city. Homer, Dio notes, is sung even among the Indians in their own language, and the poet's life of poverty and wandering deserves praise. The close turns to Homer's Minos, companion of Zeus, and to Zeus as father of men and gods, a model for kings.

54. Περὶ Σωκράτους Oration 54 (On Socrates)

    This brief piece sets the sophists Hippias, Gorgias, Polus and Prodicus, who grew rich on empty speeches, against the man of Abdera who spent his fortune on philosophy and against Socrates, poor and taking no fees. Socrates talked with anyone in the market, the wrestling schools and at the bankers' tables. The sophists' words have vanished, Dio observes, while those of Socrates, who wrote nothing, last for ever, published by his friends.

55. Περὶ Ὁμήρου καὶ Σωκράτους Oration 55 (On Homer and Socrates)

    In this dialogue Dio argues that Socrates was Homer's pupil, not Archelaus', though he lived centuries later. Both, he says, taught through characters: Homer shows boastfulness and cowardice in Dolon and in the suitors, and Socrates named Gorgias, Polus, Thrasymachus, Anytus and Alcibiades to the same purpose. Each also chose illustrations to suit the hearer, Socrates speaking to Anytus of tanners and cobblers and to Meno the Thessalian of lovers.

56. Ἀγαμέμνων ἢ περὶ βασιλείας Oration 56 (Agamemnon, or On Kingship)

    A dialogue on kingship opens with the question whether there are shepherds of men, as of goats and cattle. Agamemnon is offered as a model of the accountable king: he took Nestor's advice to marshal the army by tribes and clans and did nothing without the council of elders. His offer of gifts and a daughter in marriage to appease Achilles is read as a harsher penalty than any private suit, and the subject proves to be rule itself.

57. Νέστωρ Oration 57 (Nestor)

    Why does Homer have Nestor boast of advising Pirithous, Dryas, Caeneus and Theseus when he tries to reconcile Agamemnon and Achilles? Dio's answer is that the old man meant to humble two men swollen with pride, one by birth and strength, the other by royal power, and that his speech works like honey, sweet to the healthy and stinging to a wound. He then justifies repeating to his audience the speeches he made before the emperor.

58. Ἀχιλλεύς Oration 58 (Achilles)

    The boy Achilles scorns Chiron's lessons in archery, the lyre and digging roots, calling the bow a coward's weapon and threatening to go home to Peleus. Chiron, enraged but fond of him, prophesies his future: flattered as the best of men while others rule, he is to maltreat the dead and die at the hands of a prudent warrior he never sees.

59. Φιλοκτήτης Oration 59 (Philoctetes)

    Dio retells in prose the opening of Euripides' Philoctetes. Odysseus, sent to Lemnos because the captured seer Helenus has said that Troy cannot fall without Philoctetes and the bow of Heracles, fears the man he once left behind there, and Athena changes his looks and voice. Posing as an Argive driven from the army by Odysseus over the death of Palamedes, he wins the trust of Philoctetes, who describes his wretched life on the shore.

60. Νέσσος ἢ Δηιάνειρα Oration 60 (Nessus, or Deianira)

    Asked whether Archilochus or Sophocles is at fault in telling of Nessus and Deianira, Dio's speaker denies that the Centaur tried to violate her at all. Instead Nessus advised her to soften Heracles, and the fatal robe stands for the soft clothes, bedding and rich food she persuaded him to adopt. The close compares philosophers to the makers of clay figures, shaping any myth to their purpose, as Socrates did with every subject.

61. Χρυσηίς Oration 61 (Chryseis)

    Chryseis, the priest's daughter named at the start of the Iliad, is the subject of this dialogue with a woman who admires Homer. Dio argues that Agamemnon's praise of her mind was earned, since she knew the sons of Atreus deferred to their wives, Helen and Clytemnestra. Near the close Agamemnon's later passion for Cassandra is read as arrogance and luxury, and the speech ends by asking whether to hear what really happened or what ought to have.

62. Περὶ βασιλείας καὶ τυραννίδος Oration 62 (On Kingship and Tyranny)

    Addressed to a ruler of countless subjects, this short discourse holds that a man who cannot govern himself cannot govern multitudes. Self-mastery costs nothing in money, armies or walls, yet is the hardest rule of all, as Sardanapallus showed with Nineveh and Babylon in his hand. The close likens a foolish ruler to a ship without a helmsman and a chariot without a driver.

63. Περὶ τύχης, λόγος πρῶτος Oration 63 (On Fortune 1)

    People stand to fortune as sailors to the wind, rejoicing when it blows and lamenting when it fails. Dio credits fortune with turning poverty to wealth and weakness to strength, and tells how Apelles, despairing of painting a horse's foam, flung a sponge at the picture and found the effect. It ends by reading the old emblems of fortune: the razor, the sphere, the rudder and Amaltheia's horn.

64. Περὶ τύχης, δεύτερος Oration 64 (On Fortune 2)

    The complaints people make against fortune, the speaker argues, are its greatest praise. He runs through those who blamed it, from Croesus, Astyages and Polycrates to Medea, Phaedra and Orestes, then takes famous lines of verse on Libya, Egyptian Thebes, Delos and Athens and answers each with a deflating retort. The close turns to the lot that fell to Ajax, the two jars of Zeus, and the gifts fortune deals out to each.

65. Περὶ τύχης, τρίτος Oration 65 (On Fortune 3)

    Those who grow insolent in prosperity make the best case for fortune itself, Dio argues in the last of the three speeches on it, since everyone applauds when it leaves them. Fortune, given a voice, answers that she favours no one but shows each person as they are. She makes no one master of her gifts without judgement, just as a guest given a house does not own it without a deed.

66. Περὶ δόξης πρῶτος Oration 66 (On Reputation 1)

    Why do people despise the glutton, the drunkard and the lover, yet praise the man who craves honour? The speech attacks the crowns, front seats and proclamations that cities offer as bait. The seeker of glory, it argues, lies open to blows from anyone, like the disenfranchised. The rich are compared to coin, handled until worn and rejected, and reputation to the Furies of tragedy with their torches and whips.

67. Περὶ δόξης δεύτερος Oration 67 (On Reputation 2)

    A dialogue on what sets the philosopher apart from the crowd: he judges everything, himself included, by truth, not by opinion, which is a rule bent in countless ways. A man who measured himself by opinion would be more foolish than Margites, like one cheered by his long morning shadow and shamed by it at noon. His psychē would wax and wane more often than the moon, a worse lot than Meleager's, whose life hung on a brand.

68. Περὶ δόξης τρίτος Oration 68 (On Reputation 3)

    Most people pursue and avoid things not from knowledge but from opinion, pleasure or habit, and this is where the third speech on reputation begins. Indians and Spartans endure wounds through training where Phrygians and Lydians give way, and the ambitions of money, slaves and eloquence all go astray without knowing what is better. Only the one who seeks wisdom can do well; the rest drift like a ship with no harbour in view.

69. Περὶ Ἀρετῆς Oration 69 (On Aretē)

    Everyone praises courage, justice and wisdom, and honours Heracles, the Dioscuri, Theseus and Achilles, yet spends effort on other things. Dio sets this paradox against the value people set on pipers, cobblers and doctors while neglecting the justice without which people live worse than beasts; Scythian nomads, with no houses or fields, live lawfully. The speech ends on those who choose lawgivers only because they cannot restrain themselves.

70. Περὶ φιλοσοφίας Oration 70 (On Philosophy)

    Would anyone call a man a farmer who talks of farming but buys no oxen and spends his days in town? This dialogue applies the test of deeds over words to the would-be hunter and the merchant, then to philosophy, which has its own proper work. Knowing astronomy or horsemanship makes no one better, it concludes, but a true student of philosophy never turns to idleness and drink.

71. Περὶ φιλοσόφου Oration 71 (On the Philosopher)

    Hippias of Elis came to Olympia with a ring, oil flask and strigil he had made himself; must the philosopher likewise excel at everything? Dio answers that the philosopher surpasses craftsmen not in their crafts but in judging when and whether a thing should be done. Daedalus erred in building the Labyrinth, in serving Pasiphae and in giving Icarus wings; a ruler of Dio's own time sought crowns for singing and wrestling.

72. Περὶ τοῦ σχήματος Oration 72 (On Appearance)

    Sailors, farmers, shepherds and innkeepers go about in working dress unmocked, but a man in a cloak with long hair and beard is jeered and pulled about. Dio explains that his dress announces he has come to rebuke people, and they dislike him as boys dislike a tutor. A fable of the owl ends the speech: today's owls keep only the feathers of the wise bird, as we keep the dress of Socrates and Diogenes.

73. Περὶ πίστεως Oration 73 (On Faith)

    Leptines at Syracuse, the Magi under Cambyses and Persaeus on Acrocorinth head a roll of men entrusted with cities, treasure and citadels, as the speech asks whether trust profits those who receive it. It shows how Athens repaid Miltiades with prison and nearly left Cimon disfranchised. Trust brings endless labour, little thanks and often blame. Dio closes by disclaiming the part of Zethus, who scolded his brother for neglecting his affairs.

74. Περὶ ἀπιστίας Oration 74 (On Distrust)

    In this dialogue on distrust, people are harmed not only by enemies but by friends, kinsmen, brothers and fathers, so Epicharmus was right to say 'be sober and remember to distrust'. Examples of broken faith follow: Tissaphernes' oaths to Clearchus, Philip of Macedon's perjuries, Lysander's saying that men are cheated with oaths as boys with knucklebones. Even the famous pairs, Orestes and Pylades, Theseus and Pirithous, are called in question.

75. Περὶ νόμου Oration 75 (On Law)

    Law is defined as the guide of life, the common overseer of cities and the straight rule of conduct. Dio praises it as more useful than walls, since many cities stand unwalled but none without law, and as the source of the crowns, proclamations and front seats that reward benefactors. It protects the herald sent by enemies, whose staff is law's symbol, and spares the bodies of the dead.

76. Περὶ ἔθους Oration 76 (On Custom)

    Custom is defined as the common judgement of those who keep it, the unwritten law of a people or city, and justice freely accepted. Set against written law, it is likened to kingship where law is likened to tyranny: laws rule slaves by punishment, customs rule the free by shame. Kings stand above laws but follow customs, and in war it is custom that lets the dead be buried and heralds pass.

77. Περὶ φθόνου Oration 77/78 (On Envy)

    Hesiod's line on the potter's grudge against a fellow potter opens this long dialogue on envy, held before a large crowd. A man who lives by the crowd's praise, Dio argues, is remade to its taste, like a horse a painter redrew on the crowd's advice until it looked like anything but a horse. He ends by urging frankness towards oneself and one's dearest, since envy and ignorance do worse harm than any poison.

78. Περὶ πλούτου Oration 79 (On Wealth)

    Good laws and sober magistrates, or crowds, markets, silks of the Seres and Babylon, and golden roofs like the palaces of Alcinous and Menelaus: Dio asks which makes a great city worth admiring. He mocks the trade in ivory and in amber washed up by a Celtic river, which lets Celts, Indians, Arabs and Babylonians draw tribute from the folly of those who buy. Medes, Persians and Macedonians in turn prized the spoils of peoples already ruined.

79. Τῶν ἐν Κιλικίᾳ περὶ ἐλευθερίας Oration 80 (On Freedom, to the Cilicians)

    The speaker answers an audience surprised that he follows no trade, shuns councils and theatres, and holds assembly by himself. True freedom, he argues, is lost to bonds unseen, as Homer's Ares was held by chains fine as a spider's web. The speech ends with the gilded chain people forge for themselves, worked with gold, stones and purple into crowns, sceptres and thrones.