Monday, April 25, 2016
The Growth of the Mind
Philemon, fragment 103 (my translation):
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I myself have heard these (philosophers), and mind, my good fellow, doesn't grow spontaneously for men, like thyme in a field; wits grow, they say, always a little at a time, from speaking a bit and listening to others and contemplating.Text and apparatus from R. Kassel and C. Austin, edd., Poetae Comici Graeci, Vol. VII: Menecrates-Xenophon (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1989), p. 283:
ἤκουσα τούτων αὐτός, οὐδὲ φύεται
αὐτόματον ἀνθρώποισιν, ὦ βέλτιστε, νοῦς
ὥσπερ ἐν ἀγρῷ θύμος· ἐκ δὲ τοῦ λέγειν τι καὶ
ἑτέρων ἀκούειν καὶ θεωρῆσαι ˘¯
κατὰ μικρὸν ἀεί, φασί, φύονται φρένες.
