timelets

During this siege he had a dream in which he saw Heracles stretching out his hand to him from the wall and calling him. And many of the Tyrians dreamed that Apollo told them he was going away to Alexander, since he was displeased at what was going on in the city. Whereupon, as if the god had been a common deserter caught in the act of going over to the enemy, they encircled his colossal figure with cords and nailed it down to its pedestal, calling him an Alexandrist.

--- Plutarch: Life of Alexander

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Alexander*/4.html

I fail to imagine how people at the time thought about their gods who revealed their intentions through human dreams and were embodied to act through their statues.

Maybe this is something like that, "The statue of the Commander enters, proclaiming: "The wages of sin is death". " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dom_Juan#Act_V

A totally relatable 2,000-year old experience:

Apollonius, we are told, not understanding the Roman language, requested Cicero to declaim in Greek, with which request Cicero readily complied, thinking that in this way his faults could better be corrected. After he had declaimed, his other hearers were astounded and vied with one another in their praises, but Apollonius was not greatly moved while listening to him, and when he had ceased sat for a long time lost in thought; then, since Cicero was distressed at this, he said: "Thee, indeed, O Cicero, I admire and commend; but Greece I pity for her sad fortune, since I see that even the only glories which were left to us, culture and eloquence, are through thee to belong also to the Romans."

--- Plutarch, The Life of Cicero, 4:10.

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Cicero*.html

All things, they say, undergo great changes, as one again succeeds another, and especially the art of divination; at one period it rises in esteem and is successful in its predictions, because manifest and genuine signs are sent forth from the Deity; and again, in another age, it is in small repute, being off-hand, for the most part, and seeking to grasp the future by means of faint and blind senses. Such, at any rate, was the tale told by the wisest of the Tuscans, who were thought to know much more about it than the rest.

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Sulla*.html

Certain times are more predictable than others because of ... what?

...we are told that when he was putting on boastful airs after his campaign in Libya, a certain nobleman said to him: "How canst thou be an honest man, when thy father left thee nothing, and yet thou art so rich?"

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Sulla*.html

Дочитал и дослушал, наконец-то, Бхавад Гиту. Потом, буквально в тот же вечер, переключился на Плутарха и почувствовал себя, как дома. В обeих книгах идут рассказы о событиях тысячелетней давности, но греки и римляне ведут себя, как родные и знакомые, а индусы, как марсиане.

...let their hair grow long; but the fashion was enjoined by Lykurgus. It is recorded that he said of this mode of wearing the hair, that it made handsome men look handsomer, and made ugly men look more ferocious.

--- Plutarch, The Lives. Life of Lysander.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14114/14114-h/14114-h.htm

And seeking to prejudice his son against Greek culture, he indulges in an utterance all too rash for his years, declaring, in the tone of a prophet or a seer, that Rome would lose her empire when she had become infected with Greek letters. But time has certainly shown the emptiness of this ill-boding speech of his, for while the city was at the zenith of its empire, she made every form of Greek learning and culture her own.

It was not only Greek philosophers that he hated, but he was also suspicious of Greeks who practised medicine at Rome. He had heard, it would seem, of Hippocrates' reply when the Great King of Persia consulted him, with the promise of a fee of many talents, namely, that he would never put his skill at the service of Barbarians who were enemies of Greece. He said all Greek physicians had taken a similar oath, and urged his son to beware of them all.

--- Plutarch, the Lives, Cato the Elder: 23.

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Cato_Major*.html

And yet Archimedes possessed such a lofty spirit, so profound a soul, and such a wealth of scientific theory, that although his inventions had won for him a name and fame for superhuman sagacity, 4 he would not consent to leave behind him any treatise on this subject, but regarding the work of an engineer and every art that ministers to the needs of life as ignoble and vulgar, he devoted his earnest p481 efforts only to those studies the subtlety and charm of which are not affected by the claims of necessity.

...
For no one could by his own efforts discover the proof, and yet as soon as he learns it from him, he thinks he might have discovered it himself; so smooth and rapid is the path by which he leads one to the desired conclusion.

--- Plutarch, Marcellus: 17.

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Marcellus*.html

For neither is a man to be blamed for shunning death, if he does not cling to life disgracefully, nor to be praised for boldly meeting death, if he does this with contempt of life. For this reason Homer always brings his boldest and most valiant heroes into battle well armed and equipped; and the Greek lawgivers punish him who casts away his shield, not him who throws down his sword or spear, thus teaching that his own defence from harm, rather than the infliction of harm upon the enemy, should be every man's first care, and particularly if he governs a city or commands an army.

--- Plutarch, The Lives. Pelopidas: 1.

...there would seem to be some truth in a story told about divorce, which runs as follows. A Roman once divorced his wife, and when his friends admonished him, saying: "Is she not discreet? is she not beautiful? is she not fruitful?" he held out his shoe (the Romans call it "calceus"), saying: "Is this not handsome? is it not new? but no one of you can tell me where it pinches my foot?" For, as a matter of fact, it is great and notorious faults that separate many wives from their husbands; but the slight and frequent frictions arising from some unpleasantness or incongruity of characters, unnoticed as they may be by everybody else, also produce incurable alienations in those whose lives are linked together.

--- Plutarch, The Lives. Aemilius, 5. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Aemilius*.html

So natural is it for most men to be more galled by bitter words than hostile acts; since insolence is harder for them to bear than injury. Besides, defensive acts are tolerated in an enemy as a necessary right, but insults are thought to spring from an excess of hatred or baseness.

--- Plutarch, the Lives. Timolean 32.
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Timoleon*.html

And though he owned numberless silver mines, and highly valuable tracts of land with the labourers upon them, nevertheless one might regard all this as nothing compared with the value of his slaves; so many and so capable were the slaves he possessed, — readers, amanuenses, silversmiths, stewards, table-servants; and he himself directed their education, and took part in it himself as a teacher, and, in a word, he thought that the chief duty of the master was to care for his slaves as the living implements of household management.

7 And in this Crassus was right, if, as he used to say, he held that anything else was to be done for him by his slaves, but his slaves were to be governed by their master. For household management, as we see, is a branch of finance in so far as it deals with lifeless things; but a branch of politics when it deals with men.

--- Plutarch, Lives. Crassus: 6-7.
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Crassus*.html

But the joy of the city was most apparent in the honour and loving favour which both the senate and the whole people bestowed upon the women, declaring their belief that the city's salvation was manifestly due to them. When, however, the senate passed a decree that whatsoever they asked for themselves in the way of honour or favour, should be furnished and done for them by the magistrates, they asked for nothing else besides the erection of a temple of Women's Fortune, the expense of which they offered to contribute of themselves, if the city would undertake to perform, at the public charge, all the sacrifices and honours, such as are due to the gods.

--- Plutarch, Lives (Coriolanus: 37).

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Coriolanus*.html

https://www.wsj.com/graphics/votecast-2020/

They put their hopes in time especially, and in the vicissitudes of fortune, since they knew not how to save themselves by their own efforts, but turmoil, terror, and rumours of evil possessed the city [of Rome]. At last something happened that was like what Homer often mentions, although people generally do not wholly believe it...

...
people despise Homer and say that with his impossible exploits and incredible tales he makes it impossible to believe in every man's power to determine his own choice of action. 5 This, however, is not what Homer does, but those acts which are natural, customary, and the result of reasoning, he attributes to our own volition ...

...while in exploits of a strange and extraordinary nature, requiring some rush of inspiration, and desperate courage, he does not represent the god as taking away, but as prompting, a man's choice of action; nor yet as creating impulses in a man, but rather conceptions which lead to impulses, and by these his action is not made involuntary, but his will is set in motion, while courage and hope are added to sustain him. 7 For either the influence of the gods must be wholly excluded from all initiating power over our actions, or in what other way can they assist and co-operate with men? They certainly do not mould our bodies by their direct agency, nor give the requisite change to the action of our hands and feet, but rather, by certain motives, conceptions, and purposes, they rouse the active and elective powers of our spirits, or, on the other hand, divert and check them.

--- Plutarch, Lives (Coriolanus 32).
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Coriolanus*.html

Of his knowledge and ability in the field of military tactics and leadership...

Hannibal, however, declared that the foremost of all generals in experience and ability was Pyrrhus, that Scipio was second, and he himself third, as I have written in my life of Scipio. And in a word, Pyrrhus would seem to have been always and continually studying and meditating upon this one subject, regarding it as the most kingly branch of learning; the rest he regarded as mere accomplishments and held them in no esteem.

--- Plutarch. Lives.

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Pyrrhus*.html

and formal prosecution of Pheidias was made in the assembly. Embezzlement, indeed, was not proven, for the gold of the statue, from the very start, had been so wrought upon and cast about it by Pheidias, at the wise suggestion of Pericles, that it could all be taken off and weighed, and this is what Pericles actually ordered the accusers of Pheidias to do at this time.

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Pericles*.html

By contrast, mail-in vote counting laws adopted by Pensilvania and Georgia legislatures during this election cycle were prone to generate conspiracy theories in a close contest. Florida took care of the problem after the year 2000 recount controversy.

When Archidamus, the king of the Lacedaemonians, asked him whether he or Pericles was the better wrestler, he replied: "Whenever I throw him in wrestling, he disputes the fall, and carries his point, and persuades the very men who saw him fall."

--- Plutarch, Lives.

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Pericles*.html

Now there was nothing, in my opinion, to prevent both of them, the naturalist and the seer, from being in the right of the matter; the one correctly divined the cause, the other the object or purpose. It was the proper province of the one to observe why anything happens, and how it comes to be what it is; of the other to declare for what purpose anything happens, and what it means. And those who declare that the discovery of the cause, in any phenomenon, does away with the meaning, do not perceive that they are doing away not only with divine portents, but also with artificial tokens, such as the ringing of gongs, the language of fire-signals, and the shadows of the pointers on sundials. Each of these has been made, through some casual adaptation, to have some meaning.

--- Plutarch, Lives (Pericles).
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Pericles*.html

Note the difference between the cause of an event and its meaning, i.e. the difference between How/What? and So What?

But the strongest and most apparent reason why the multitude hated him was based on the matter of the tenth of the spoil of Veii, and herein they had a plausible, though not a very just ground of complaint. 5 He had vowed, as it seems, on setting out against Veii, that if he should take the city, he would consecrate the tenth of its booty to the Delphian god. But after the city had been taken and sacked, he allowed his soldiers full enjoyment of their plunder, either because he shrank from annoying them, or because, in the multitude of his activities, he as good as forgot his vow.
...
The Senate voted, not that the booty should be redistributed, for that would have been a difficult matter, but that those who had got it should, in person and under oath, bring the tenth thereof to the public treasury. This subjected the soldiers to p115 many vexations and constraints. They were poor men, who had toiled hard, and yet were now forced to contribute a large share of what they had gained, yes, and spent already.... The soldiers were filled with indignation at the thought that it was the goods of the enemy of which he had once vowed a tithe, but the goods of his fellow citizens from which he was now paying the tithe.

--- Plutarch, Lives. Camillus:7-8.
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Camillus*.html

A couple of thousand years ago:

On seeing certain wealthy foreigners in Rome carrying puppies and young monkeys about in their bosoms and fondling them, Caesar asked, we are told, if the women in their country did not bear children, thus in right princely fashion rebuking those who squander on animals that proneness to love and loving affection which is ours by nature, and which is due only to our fellow-men.
...
A colour is suited to the eye if its freshness, and its pleasantness as well, stimulates and p5 nourishes the vision; and so our intellectual vision must be applied to such objects as, by their very charm, invite it onward to its own proper good.

Such objects are to be found in virtuous deeds; these implant in those who search them out a great and zealous eagerness which leads to imitation.

--- Plutarch, Lives.
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Pericles*.html

Our neighbors have chickens now! Every day I hear their clucking and in the middle of an epidemic it sounds quite life-affirming.

..he[Themistocles] fastened the city to the Piraeus, and the land to the sea. 4 And so it was that he increased the privileges of the common people as against the nobles, and filled them with boldness, since the controlling power came now into the hands of skippers and boatswains and pilots. Therefore it was, too, that the bema in Pnyx, which had stood so as to look off toward the sea, was afterwards turned by the thirty tyrants so as to look inland, because they thought that maritime empire was the mother of democracy, and that oligarchy was less distasteful to tillers of the soil.

--- Plutarch, The Life of Themistocles.
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Themistocles*.html

Even when a new highly beneficial technology-business space emerges, government power is not transferred by itself. Rather, it requires a conscious effort to redistribute it toward the new industry.

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Human Capital & Behavioral Economics, circa 1st century BC

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