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In this sense Menander was also a philosophical comic writer; and we may boldly place the moral maxims which remain of his by the side at least of those of Moliere. But no comedy is constructed of mere apophthegms. The poet must be a moralist, but his personages cannot always be moralizing.
It is a grand and lovely scene; and when I look at it, I do not wonder at one of the Consul's apophthegms, namely, that the chief advantage of foreign travel is, that it teaches you that one place is just as good to live in as another. Imagine that the one place he had in his mind at the time was just this one. But that is neither here nor there.
The Turks have a maxim which, like most cynical apophthegms, carries with it the buzzing trumpet of falsehood as well as the small, fine “sting of truth.” “If your friend has made the pilgrimage once, distrust him; if he has made the pilgrimage twice, cut him dead!” The caution is said to be as applicable to the visitants of Jerusalem as to those of Mecca, but I cannot help believing that the frailties of all the hadjis, whether Christian or Mahometan, are greatly exaggerated.
A work on astronomy, apparently written in connection with his reform of the calendar, two pamphlets attacking Cato, and a collection of apophthegms, have also disappeared. But we possess what were by far the most important of his writings, his famous memoirs of the Gallic and Civil Wars.
Time always brings victory to truth, and shame to falsehood. But you are not worthy of such fine apophthegms. At present "you are not fit to hear yourself convinced." I will wait for a better opportunity, and have patience with you, if I can.
But he answered all their expostulations with a string of prudent apophthegms, such as, "The shortest follies are the best"; "Better to retrench upon conviction than compulsion"; and divers other wise maxims, seemingly the result of experience and philosophic reflection. To such a degree of enthusiasm did his present economy prevail, that he was actually seized with the desire of amassing.
The history of prophecy, sorting every prophecy with the event fulfilling the same, is deficient; but the history of Providence, and the notable examples of God's judgments and deliverances have passed through the labour of many. Orations, letters, and brief sayings, or apophthegms, are appendices to history. Thus much concerning history, which answers to memory. Poetry refers to the imagination.
Ancient traditions speak much of his learning, and of the gallant inroads he had made into the dead languages, in which he had made captive a host of Greek nouns and Latin verbs, and brought off rich booty in ancient saws and apophthegms, which he was wont to parade in his public harangues, as a triumphant general of yore his spolia opima.
His wisdom was one of apophthegms and maxims, utterly impracticable, too often merely negative, as was his creed, which, though he refused to be classed with any sect, was really a somewhat undefined Unitarianism or rather Islamism. He could say, with the old Moslem, "God is great who hath resisted his will?"
Similarly the declaration of Antigone that neither for husband nor children would she have performed the toil she undertook for Polynices clearly shows that the tie of the common womb was held as closer than the tie of marriage; and this points to the conditions of the communal clan. Plutarch, Apophthegms of the Lacedæmonians, LXV. Herodotus, III, 119. Sophocles, Antigone, line 905 et seq.
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