The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2 (of 6)

Chapter 74: CHAP. 32. (32.)—PRECEPTS THE MOST USEFUL IN LIFE.

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The volume assembles an encyclopedic survey of the known world and its living inhabitants, moving from detailed regional geography and descriptions of seas, rivers, islands, and peoples to extended treatments of humanity, its generation, anatomy, and the origins and inventions of arts. Subsequent books catalog terrestrial animals—their habits, capture, and uses—followed by comprehensive observations on fish and marine creatures, their sizes and behaviors. Accounts mix naturalistic description, reported marvels, medicinal uses derived from animals, and travel and secondhand reports, organized as topical chapters intended as a practical compendium of natural and human phenomena.

CHAP. 32. (32.)—PRECEPTS THE MOST USEFUL IN LIFE.

Again, men have placed on an equality with those of the oracles the precepts uttered by Chilon,1149 the Lacedæmonian. These have been consecrated at Delphi in letters of gold, and are to the following effect: “That each person ought to know himself, and not to desire to possess too much;”1150 and “That misery is the sure companion of debt and litigation.” He died of joy, on hearing that his son had been victorious in the Olympic games, and all Greece assisted at his funeral rites.