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Posidonius

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Riches are a cause of evil, not because, of themselves, they do any evil, but because they goad men on so that they are ready to do evil.

Posidonius (Greek: Ποσειδώνιος) (c. 135 BCE – c. 51 BCE), was a Greek Stoic philosopher, politician, astronomer, geographer, historian and teacher native to Apamea, Syria. He was acclaimed as the greatest polymath of his age. His vast body of work exists today only in fragments.

Quotes

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  • A single day among the learned lasts longer than the longest life of the ignorant.
  • Things which bestow upon the soul no greatness or confidence or freedom from care are not goods. But riches and health and similar conditions do none of these things; therefore, riches and health are not goods. Things which bestow upon the soul no greatness or confidence or freedom from care, but on the other hand create in it arrogance, vanity, and insolence, are evils. But things which are the gift of Fortune drive us into these evil ways. Therefore these things are not goods.
  • When men were scattered over the earth, protected by eaves or by the dug-out shelter of a cliff or by the trunk of a hollow tree, it was philosophy that taught them to build houses.
  • There are never any occasions when you need think yourself safe because you wield the weapons of Fortune; fight with your own! Fortune does not furnish arms against herself; hence men equipped against their foes are unarmed against Fortune herself.

Indirect quotes

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  • But Posidonius says, that it is not a good thing to pledge one's friends as the Carmani do; for they, when at their banquets they wish to testify their friendship for each other, cut the veins on their faces, and mingle the blood which flows down with the liquor, and then drink it; thinking it the very extremest proof of friendship to taste one another's blood. And after pledging one another in this manner, they anoint their heads with ointment, especially with that distilled from roses, and if they cannot get that, with that distilled from apples, in order to ward off the effects of the drink, and in order also to avoid being injured by the evaporation of the wine; and if they cannot get ointment of apples, they then use that extracted from the iris or from spikenard.
    • Qtd. in Athenaeus, bk. iv, ch. 13 (tr. C. D. Yonge, vol. i, 1854); cf. Alexis

Quotes about Posidonius

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  • The sun is pure fire: so Posidonius in the seventh book of his Celestial Phenomena. And it is larger than the earth, as the same author says in the sixth book of his Physical Discourse. Moreover it is spherical in shape like the world itself according to this same author and his school.
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