Modern people are obsessed with ancient quotes. People assume that, if an ancient philosopher said something, it must automatically have some sort of profound meaning or significance. This is part of the reason why there are so many quotations floating around on the internet that have been misattributed to famous people from ancient times. (I have written an article debunking a few of the more popular misattributed ancient quotes, but there are many others that I haven’t covered.)
Unfortunately, even many of the quotes people use today that genuinely come from ancient authors have been greatly misinterpreted or taken out of context. A few of the most popular misinterpreted ancient quotes include “Know yourself,” “Love conquers all,” “I fear the Danaans, even bearing gifts,” and “the face that launched a thousand ships.”
“Know yourself.”
The phrase “Know yourself,” or, in ancient Greek, “γνῶθι σεαυτόν” (gnôthi seautón), is probably the most famous of the Delphic maxims, which were a set of 147 aphorisms inscribed at the Temple of Apollon at Delphoi. These maxims were believed to be the prophetic utterances of the god Apollon himself. All of them are very short—usually only two or three words in the original Greek.
Unfortunately, partly as a result of their extreme brevity, the Delphic maxims are often highly ambiguous and their meanings are difficult for many people today to understand. The challenge in understanding the maxims is only heightened by the fact that they are so firmly rooted in the worldview of the ancient Greeks, which is very different from the worldview that most people today are familiar with.
The quote “Know yourself” is especially beloved by modern self-help writers, who seem to generally think that it means that, if you understand who you really are, know what your values are, and know what you want in life, you can unlock your true potential and live a more fulfilling life.
Self-help authors often distinguish between the performance that a person puts on for others and that person’s true, inner self, seeing these as two very distinct things. They tend to strongly emphasize ideas like freedom of self-expression and liberation from social constraints. For instance, here is an article published on the Psychology Today website on 9 March 2016 titled “Know yourself? 6 Specific Ways to Know Who You Are.” The article concludes:
“Acting on self-knowledge will give you energy and save you energy. You’ll feel freer and stronger because you no longer conform to how you ‘should’ feel, think, or act.”
I’m not going to comment on whether the techniques self-help writers recommend are actually helpful. (After all, I’m not a psychologist.) I will, however, point out that, when the ancient Greeks used the phrase “Know yourself,” they were definitely not thinking about freedom of self-expression and liberation from social constraints.
ABOVE: Photograph of the remains of the Temple of Apollon at Delphoi, where the Delphic maxims were originally inscribed
In ancient Greece, the phrase “Know yourself” was used in a variety of contexts and with a variety of different meanings. Nonetheless, it does not seem to have ever been used in the sense of freeing yourself from social inhibitions and unlocking your true potential.
Instead, in ancient times, “knowing yourself” generally seems to have been more about knowing your place, having a realistic understanding of your own abilities, and recognizing that you are a mortal and not a deity. For instance, in the ancient Greek tragedy Prometheus Bound, which is traditionally attributed to the Athenian tragic playwright Aischylos (lived c. 525 – c. 455 BC), the phrase “Know yourself” is used by the Titan Okeanos as a warning to Prometheus to remind him that he is subject to the will of Zeus.
In Plato’s dialogue Charmides, there is a debate over the meaning of the phrase “Know yourself.” The speaker Kritias argues that the maxim was intended by Apollon as a greeting to introduce the saying “μηδὲν ἄγαν” (i.e. “Nothing to excess”), but that the dedicators of the inscription at Delphoi mistook the greeting for a piece of advice.
According to Kritias, the phrases “Know yourself” and “Nothing to excess” have the same meaning and they are both reminders for a person to remain humble. He says to Socrates, in Charmides 165a-165b, as translated by W. R. M. Lamb:
“For they supposed that ‘Know thyself!’ was a piece of advice, and not the god’s salutation of those who were entering; and so, in order that their dedications too might equally give pieces of useful advice, they wrote these words and dedicated them. Now my object in saying all this, Socrates, is to abandon to you all the previous argument—for, though perhaps it was you who were more in the right, or perhaps it was I, yet nothing at all certain emerged from our statements—and to proceed instead to satisfy you of this truth, if you do not admit it, that temperance is knowing oneself.”
The Souda, a Byzantine encyclopedia compiled in the tenth century AD, supports this interpretation that the phrase “Know yourself” is primarily a reminder to remain humble. It states: “τάττεται δὲ ἡ παροιμία ἐπὶ τῶν ὑπὲρ ὅ εἰσι κομπαζόντων,” which means “The phrase applies to those whose boasts exceed what they are.”
There is evidence that, in ancient times, the phrase “Know yourself” was also sometimes used to remind people that they are mortal and that they will eventually die. For instance, a Roman mosaic from the San Gregorio Magno al Celio depicts a skeleton reclining above the motto “γνῶθι σαυτόν.” In this sense, the phrase is analogous to the Latin phrase “Memento mori,” which means “Remember that you must die.”
ABOVE: Photograph of a Roman mosaic from the San Gregorio Magno al Celio depicting a reclining skeleton with the motto “γνῶθι σαυτόν” written beneath
To modern readers, this may seem like a pointless restating of the obvious, but, for the ancient Greeks, it was an extremely important reminder. In the ancient world in general and especially in ancient Greece, the lines between humans and deities were often blurred. It was widely believed that humans who were especially righteous or courageous could become deities after their deaths, like the hero Herakles.
The Greeks also believed in entities known as heroes (ἥρωες; hḗrōes), who had once been mortals, but, due to their exceptional bravery while they were alive, became semi-divine entities after their deaths. (The same Greek word is the root of our English word hero, but, in Greek, it carried a slightly different meaning.)
Throughout the Delphic maxims, the importance of remembering one’s own mortality is constantly reinforced. One of the other Delphic maxims is “φρόνει θνητά,” which means, “Remember you are mortal.” Another one is “εὖ πάσχε ὡς θνητός,” which means, “Fare well as a mortal.”
Writing “will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls.”
One of the best-known quotes from the works of Plato is the statement in the dialogue Phaidros that the written word “will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls.” It seems like this quote is referenced every time a new technology comes out and there is a discussion over whether the technology will be harmful to society.
Usually, the quote is portrayed as evidence that Plato was an idiotic curmudgeon who hated writing just because it was a new invention. For instance, here is an interview with the author Dennis Baron published in Inside Higher Ed in 2009 in which Baron states:
“Of course the other innovations that promised to put an end to life as we know it — movies, radio, television, rock ’n’ roll, Webster’s Third, even writing itself, all turned out to be pretty indispensable. Plato warned us in the Phaedrus that writing was dangerous because it weakened memory, and the written word was just a bare shadow of reality it stood for. We remember this, of course, because Plato wrote it down.”
Baron is egregiously misinterpreting what Plato wrote, however.
First of all, the Greek alphabet was actually developed in around the eighth century BC. By the sixth century BC, writing was already in widespread use throughout the Greek world. Plato wrote the Phaidros in around the early fourth century BC, meaning, by the time Plato was writing the dialogue, writing had already been known in Greece for around four hundred years; it was not perceived as a new invention, but rather a very old invention.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Dipylon inscription, dated to c. 740 BC, which is one of the oldest surviving examples of writing in the Greek alphabet. This inscription dates to around four hundred years before Plato.
Furthermore, Plato himself was an extremely prolific writer. Over his lifetime, he is known to have written at least thirty dialogues and he probably wrote a large number of letters and notes as well. All of his dialogues have survived to the present day complete, thanks largely to the fact that most of the Greek texts that have survived were preserved by the Byzantines, who were great admirers of Plato’s work. If Plato had really hated writing, he probably wouldn’t have spent a large part of his life writing philosophical dialogues and publishing them for people to read.
Plato does not even present the statement about writing causing forgetfulness as his own opinion; instead, the statement is made by the god Thamos, a character in an elaborate fable about the invention of writing told by Plato’s mentor Socrates as part of a discussion in the dialogue about the arts of writing and rhetoric. If anyone hated writing, it was Socrates, not Plato.
Plato doesn’t exactly portray Socrates as a technology-hating idiot either, though. When the full passage is read in context, it becomes clear that the argument Plato portrays Socrates as making is actually far more nuanced than it is often portrayed. Here is the full story told by Socrates about the invention of writing, as translated by Benjamin Jowett:
“At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters.”
“Now in those days the god Thamos was the king of the whole country of Egypt; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon. To him came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them; he enumerated them, and Thamos enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them.”
“It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamos said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. But when they came to letters, ‘This,’ said Theuth, ‘will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit.'”
“Thamos replied: ‘O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves.”’
“‘The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”
Notice that the argument Plato portrays Socrates as making isn’t that writing magically makes people stupid and forgetful; it’s that, when people can write things down, they are less likely to take the time to actually learn those things, because they know they can just look them up.
This is undeniably correct. Think of students taking an exam. If the students are not allowed to use their notes on the exam, they are obviously going to study harder to make sure they remember everything that is going to be on the exam. If the students are allowed to use their notes, though, they are not going to study as hard and they are going to be less likely to remember the information that they were supposed to study for the exam a year later.
Also notice that Socrates never says anything about writing being “dangerous” or about it destroying people’s way of life. He doesn’t even say that writing is useless. The point he is making is simply that writing has certain downsides.
ABOVE: Depiction from the Brooklyn Museum of the Egyptian god Thoth, the inventor of writing and central figure in the myth told by Socrates in Plato’s Phaidros
A little bit later in the discussion, Socrates elaborates on his argument, observing that, once something has been written down, it can be misinterpreted, misrepresented, and attacked with impunity, since the original author is no longer there to clarify what they meant or defend their work:
“I cannot help feeling, Phaidros, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.”
Again, this is undeniably true. After all, this whole article is about how passages from ancient sources have been widely misinterpreted and taken out of context.
The statements that Plato portrays Socrates as making about writing are not the unhinged ravings of an instinctive luddite, but rather the perfectly restrained and intelligent criticisms of a reasonable individual.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a first-century AD Roman marble head of Socrates from the Louvre, possibly copied from a bronze original made in the fifth century BC by the Athenian sculptor Lysippos
“Love conquers all.”
Today, the phrase “Love conquers all”—an English translation of the Latin phrase “Omnia amor vincit“—is popularly understood to mean that, through love and kindness, human beings can accomplish anything. This is not even remotely close to what the quote originally meant, however.
The ancient Greeks and Romans believed that Love (i.e. Eros or Cupid) is a capricious deity who does not care about what is good for people and who often leads people into great danger or harm. Ancient writers relished giving vivid, frightening descriptions of the power of Love and the terrible harm that he causes people.
Perhaps the most famous surviving ancient description of the suffering inflicted by Love comes from the poet Sappho of Lesbos (lived c. 630 – c. 570 BC), who writes in fragment 31, as translated by M. L. West:
“…for watching you a moment, speech fails me,
my tongue is paralyzed, at once
a light fire runs beneath my skin,
my eyes are blinded, and my ears are drumming,
the sweat pours down me, and I shake
all over, sallower than grass:
I feel as if I’m not far off from dying.”
Sappho was not the only one to describe the terrors of Love. The ancient Greek lyric poet Ibykos of Rhegion, who lived in around the late sixth century BC or thereabouts, writes in fragment 286, as translated by Andrew M. Miller:
“…Love is at rest in no season,
but like the Thracian north wind
ablaze with lightning,
rushing from Aphrodite with scorching
fits of madness, dark and unrestrained,
it forcibly convulses, from their very roots,
my mind and heart.”
It is in this literary and cultural context that the quote “Love conquers all” needs to be interpreted. The exact phrase “Love conquers all” is first used by the Roman poet Vergil (lived 70 – 19 BC) in his “Eclogue 10.” The poem is about the capricious nature of Love and the suffering that it inflicts on human beings. The central figure of the poem is Vergil’s friend Gaius Cornelius Gallus, who is portrayed as literally dying from Love. Here is the full original quote in Latin:
“Non illum nostri possunt mutare labores,
nec si frigoribus mediis Hebrumque bibamus,
Sithoniasque nives hiemis subeamus aquosae,
nec si, cum moriens alta liber aret in ulmo,
Aethiopum versemus ovis sub sidere Cancri.
Omnia vincit Amor: et nos cedamus Amori.”
Here is my own English translation:
“Our labors cannot change this thing [i.e. Love],
not even if we drink from the freezing waters of the Hebrus
and endure drenching winters and Sithonian snows,
nor if, when the decaying heat dries freely in the tall elm,
in Aethiopia we drive our sheep beneath the sign of Cancer.
Love conquers all things; and we must submit to Love.”
The original meaning of the quote is that Love is dangerous and no one is safe from it; it can strike anyone at any time and no one can resist it or control it. As the Romans understood the quote, we are not conquering through Love, but rather being conquered by Love ourselves.
ABOVE: Amor Vincit Omnia, painted between 1601 and 1602 by the Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio
“I fear the Danaans [i.e. Greeks], even bearing gifts.”
This phrase, often paraphrased as “Beware Greeks bearing gifts,” has become widely used as an expression of prudent distrust when being offered gifts or assistance by one’s enemy. While the saying has always borne the implication of wise skepticism, people often forget or are not aware that, in Vergil’s original poem, this warning not only falls upon deaf ears, but results in the death of the person who says it.
This line occurs in Vergil’s Aeneid, Book II, line 49. In the epic, the line is spoken by Laocoön, the Trojan priest of the god Neptune, the Roman equivalent of the Greek god Poseidon, at the end of a long speech arguing for why the Trojans should not bring the horse into the city. Here is the Latin text of lines forty-eight through forty-nine:
Equō nē crēdite, Teucrī
Quidquid id est, timeō Danaōs et dōna ferentēs.
Here is the English translation:
Do not trust the horse, Teucrians [i.e. Trojans].
Whatever it is, I fear the Danaans [i.e. Greeks], even bearing gifts.
Immediately after speaking this line, Laocoön hurls his spear at the Trojan Horse, but the gods have already ordained that Troy must be destroyed. They disguise the groaning of the Greek soldiers hidden inside, which would have otherwise alerted the Trojans of the ruse. Then two giant serpents sent by the goddess Minerva, the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Athena, emerge from the sea and kill not only Laocoön, but his two adult sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus as well.
This horrific scene is most famously depicted in Laocoön and his Sons, one of the most famous surviving classical sculptures, which was carved by three Greek sculptors named Agesandros, Athenodoros, and Polydoros on the island of Rhodes, probably sometime during the first century AD, although a wide range of other dates have been proposed. The sculpture is currently held in Vatican City.
In the end, Laocoön’s warning does not save Troy either; as soon as Laocoön is dead, Vergil describes the Trojans’ unanimous consensus to bring the horse into the city, thus sealing their doom. As the saying suggests, it probably is wise to distrust enemies offering gifts or assistance, but, if we are to judge by Vergil’s narrative, that healthy skepticism might also mean you are next on the gods’ cosmic hit list.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Hellenistic sculpture of Laocoön and his Sons, which shows Laocoön and his two sons being strangled by giant serpents sent by Minerva
ABOVE: Another photograph from Wikimedia Commons of Laocoön and his Sons
ABOVE: Another photograph from Wikimedia Commons of Laocoön and his Sons
“The face that launched a thousand ships”
This quote, which refers to Helen of Troy, is most recognizable in the form it was later given by the Elizabethan poet Christopher Marlowe in his 1604 stage play The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus. In the play, Faustus asks the demon Mephistopheles to bring him the ghost of Helen of Troy. When Helen enters, Faustus exclaims:
“Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Her lips suck forth my soul; see where it flies!—
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for Heaven is in these lips,
and all is dross that is not Helena.
I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
instead of Troy, shall Wittenberg be sack’d;
and I will combat with weak Menelaus,
and wear thy colours on my plumed crest;
yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
and then return to Helen for a kiss.”
In Christopher Marlowe’s play, Faustus says this because he is thoroughly stunned by Helen’s incomparable beauty. It is a little-known fact, however, that Marlowe did not invent the line about Helen’s face launching “a thousand ships”; he was paraphrasing a quote from someone else.
The quote actually originates from the Syrian satirist Loukianos of Samosata (lived c. 125 – after c. 180 AD) in his Dialogues of the Dead, chapter 18. In Loukianos’s version, one of the character says almost exactly the same line that Faustus says in Marlowe’s play, but in a different context that gives it a much darker, more macabre meaning.
In the dialogue, Hermes, the psychopomp of the dead, shows the newly-deceased Cynic philosopher Menippos the skulls of ancient beauties, who have all been dead for centuries. Menippos asks him to show him Helen. Here is the conversation that follows, as translated by H. W. and F. G. Fowler:
Menippos: “Well, but show me Helen; I shall never be able to make her out by myself.”
Hermes: “This skull is Helen.”
Menippos: “And for this a thousand ships carried warriors from every part of Greece; Greeks and barbarians were slain, and cities made desolate?”
Hermes: “Ah, Menippos, you never saw the living Helen; or you would have said with Homer,‘Well might they suffer grievous years of toil
Who strove for such a prize.’We look at withered flowers, whose dye is gone from them, and what can we call them but unlovely things? Yet in the hour of their bloom these unlovely things were things of beauty.”
This is no straightforward expression of awe at Helen’s beauty, but rather a bitingly sarcastic commentary on the ephemerality of all earthly things. Loukianos’s message is that, in the end, every person that has ever lived—strong or weak, rich or poor, beautiful or ugly—will turn into a moldering skeleton.
ABOVE: Helen of Troy, painted in 1898 by the English Pre-Raphaelite painter Evelyn De Morgan
