Editing Simonides of Ceos (section)

====The sage and wit====
[[File:Lyric-poetry-Walker-Highsmith.jpeg|thumb|390px|''Lyric Poetry'', painted by [[Henry Oliver Walker]] (Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington D.C.).<br>"''Simonides calls painting silent poetry and poetry painting that speaks''" — [[Plutarch]].]]
[[Plato]], in ''[[The Republic (Plato)|The Republic]]'', numbered Simonides with [[Bias of Priene|Bias]] and [[Pittacus of Mytilene|Pittacus]] among the [[Seven Sages of Greece|wise and blessed]], even putting into the mouth of [[Socrates]] the words "it is not easy to disbelieve Simonides, for he is a wise man and divinely inspired," but in his dialogue ''[[Protagoras (dialogue)|Protagoras]]'', Plato numbered Simonides with [[Homer]] and [[Hesiod]] as precursors of the [[sophist]].<ref>Plato ''Resp.'' i 331de and 335e, and ''Prot.'' 316d, cited by D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', Loeb Classical Library (1991), pages 357, 497</ref> A number of apocryphal sayings were attributed to him.

[[Michael Psellos]] accredited him with "the word is the image of the thing."<ref>Michael Psellos, ''On the Working of Demons'', cited by D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', Loeb Classical Library (1991), page 363</ref> Plutarch commended "the saying of Simonides, that he had often felt sorry after speaking but never after keeping silent"<ref>Plutarch, ''de garr.'' 514f-515a, cited by D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', Loeb Classical Library (1991), page 367</ref> and observed that "Simonides calls painting silent poetry and poetry painting that speaks"<ref>Plutarch, ''De gloria Atheniensium'' 3.346f, cited by D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', Loeb Classical Library (1991), page 363</ref> (later paraphrased by the Latin poet [[Horace]] as [[ut pictura poesis]]).

[[Diogenes Laërtius]], after quoting a famous epigram by [[Cleobulus#Works|Cleobulus]] (one of ancient Greece's 'seven sages') in which a maiden sculptured on a tomb is imagined to proclaim her eternal vigilance, quotes Simonides commenting on it in a poem of his own: "Stone is broken even by mortal hands. That was the judgement of a fool."<ref>Diogenes Laërtius, ''Lives of the Philosophers'', cited by D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', Loeb Classical Library (1991), page 465</ref> His rationalist view of the cosmos is evinced also in Plutarch's letter of consolation to Apollonius: "according to Simonides a thousand or ten thousand years are an indeterminable point, or rather the tiniest part of a point."<ref>Plutarch, ''consol. Apoll.'' 17, cited by D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', Loeb Classical Library (1991), page 501</ref>

Cicero related how, when Hieron of Syracuse asked him to define god, Simonides continually postponed his reply, "because the longer I deliberate, the more obscure the matter seems to me."<ref>{{cite book |author=Cicero |author-link=Cicero |title=De Natura Deorum |trans-title=On the Nature of the Gods |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Natura_Deorum |publisher=Academica |translator=Rackham, Harris |page=59 |year=1933 |orig-year=45 BC |id=1.22.60 }} [https://archive.org/stream/denaturadeorumac00ciceuoft#page/58/mode/2up Alt URL]</ref> [[Stobaeus]] recorded this reply to a man who had confided in Simonides some unflattering things he had heard said about him: "Please stop slandering me with your ears!".<ref>Stobaeus, ''Ecl.'' 3.2.41, cited by D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', Loeb Classical Library (1991), page 367</ref>