Los siete sabios de Grecia | Carlos García Gual

Within this cycle we are going to start with the Greeks, that is, with the Western world, and I am going to talk to you today about these somewhat legendary but historical figures in a transitory time, who are the so-called seven wise men. Seven is a number that has great prestige because It is the highest prime number of the ten. There are seven wise men, as there are seven combatants in the war of Thebes and the seven dwarfs. The seven bandits of Ecija in the seven wise men lived as has been said around the environment at the turn of the sixth century. to the fifth century, rather in the sixth century before Christ and they were from different Greek cities, I wanted to put a map there so that you can remember a little that at that time the center of the Greek world was not the peninsula but actually the Aegean Sea, not the Aegean Sea is the world where Greek culture is born in Greek culture and is born in various cities.

It is very important to think that these wise men represent characters from this time of these cities open to the sea, practically the cities of the wise men, except for this one. that it is from Sparta that they are from cities in seafaring. It is also a time in the sixth century of great social conflicts but also of great advances in Greek culture. The Greeks at that time had already colonized a large part of the Mediterranean, they had founded cities in very different places. and they were a people of progress at the same time that in a time where currencies and commerce were beginning to work and a certain cultural revolution had occurred with respect to the previous time, one can speak in Greece of the in different characters such as the teachers of the truth or the seekers of the truth and it is interesting to place the wise men within this row then within this history where the first seekers of the truth and the first teachers of the Greeks were the poets always Homer and the second place is iodine They were the great masters of Greek poetry and Greek culture.

They belong to the eighth century, a century in which the alphabet had already spread in Greek culture. Its great centers were the different cities and where Greek myths provided the great cultural tradition. in the background with its heroes and its gods, now comes the sixth century that we are going to talk about now represents a change with respect to this perspective because these wise men are already city people, they belong to what Aristotle already called political wisdom, recognized from politics as well as polis different Greek cities each one is from one of the seven in this order more or less we are going to see a little bit in this order such of miletus my grandson is on the coast hon it is already one of the great commercial cities of the richest and instead Another character, Solon, was from Athens.

Athens was not yet in the capital of the Greek world. Vias was from a city that expresses that in this system they were not there because this is a map that corresponds to the time of the Persian Wars. It was not important, but it was not important. There are some ruins of Priene. It is very close to Miletus. Pythacus was from Mytilene, that is, from the island of Lesbos that you see there. The club was one of Linos, which is on the island of Rhodes. say that if you look at the map there are four that come from this coast of that minor that was colonized by different different Greek towns where there was an area of ​​oil paintings and an area of ​​geniuses and that was where Homer had lived, whoever went to the true also other later wise men who come more or less from that area pythagoras for example comes from the island of samos era titus was from ephesus who is in that area halicarnassus which is the opacity of herodotus so that when we talk about greece we have to imagine This is coastal Greece, this is a Greece of merchants, travelers, people open to the Mediterranean and seekers of new adventure experiences.

It is the world of Ulysses and only Ulysses, who was from a small Ithaca, was a king and still belonged to the mythical world. This is not belongs to the mythical world but to a world that is already historical. Now it must be said that these wise men enjoyed enormous prestige for centuries, a prestige that often does not correspond to what we know about them because as you will see there are fundamentally two wise men of the seven. that they are such and only of whom we have enough news but about the others we know quite little and they are figures that soon entered the legend are characterized by some special feature but above all because they belong to this group of wise men the sixth century is a century where Still, oral culture means saying what is told and what is told is very rich in this Mediterranean world.

We must think that Greek culture is linked to these horizons and that is why I wanted to start with this map, not just what it did to the Greek adventurers and critics open to new ideas etcetera that was that proximity to the sea and that proximity also to the east on the one hand behind was the Persian world the Persian world that also communicated with the ancient world like Babylon etcetera etcetera and in front was that world of adventure that was the Mediterranean the Greeks were bold talkers and above all they were seekers of the truth the truth in Greek is called alezeia important when saying it is a word of negative origin it means the church comes from the DF oblivion some philosophers for example Heidegger has insisted that it is very important to understand how the Greeks saw the truth as a kind of discovery.

Greek culture is one of a culture of discoveries of advances. First there were the poets and the soothsayers, later there are the wise men who are people of city ​​and as we will see they are people of ideas fundamentally no longer based on myths but based on reasoning, words and progress and then came the philosophers and sonia of the next of the next generation in miletus after such Anaximander will come, who is a very clear philosopher, Pythagoras will come on the other hand and they will advance in search of the truth until, for example, Parmenides, who writes a great problem about milk allergy, it is already very important that the Greeks saw the truth as something that had to be discovered. and it is curious to see if you remember that in epic poetry those who guarantee the truth to the poets who make them know what happened in distant times what happens even on the Olympus of the gods were the muses the muses are a species of minor eliminated divinities were nine daughters of mimes and not even memory are linked to memory and represent the collective tradition and they inspired the poets of the myths were transmitted through that poetry inspired by the muses now in this case in This time there is a kind of break with the past and what is important is not going to be memory, what is important is going to be justice and justice does not come so much from the muses as from the search for truth, a phrase in a Greek phrase from others Xenophanes philosophers say that not from the beginning did the gods teach everything to men, but that they, searching in time, find the truth.

That could be a good motto for the adventure that the wise men begin, the search for the truth, the search for the best that is not It comes from the past but rather comes from the encounter with reality, the encounter with reality through political life in the cities. It is also curious that with respect to the muses, they remember that it had been said that they had appeared to him when he was herding his cows. in Boeotia but and the muses told him what he later tells in the agony over the gods but they gave him a warning in we tell truths but we also know how to tell lies similar to the truths this already poses a problem already started where the truth is You have to look for the truth and the muses, that is, tradition guarantees a certain knowledge, but beyond that you have to look for the truth and that is what two wise men are looking for, truth and justice.

Now, as I said, the group is more famous. names of the seven that not some of the seven of which we know very little so much so that the most famous of the wise men through the legend a legend of many centuries are some phrases some phrases made a kind of phrases like small mottos that have remained for many centuries as characteristics of Greek philosophy, sometimes they were attributed to one wise man, others to another, but it is curious that of many of these figures we do not have books, the only one that we know wrote and that he left a poetic work.

Important was Solon, who was from Athens, and in Athens a lot of his work has been preserved, but the rest have had very few things preserved, sometimes only phrases, for example, by Cleobulus, who is so cute about that phrase that says measurement is the best, Metron Ariston. It seems to me that this is a very significant phrase because it builds the measure of ethics in morality and behaving while always maintaining certain limits. That is the most essential virtue of, let's say, the Greek middle class, which I believe is called sof orsini. temperance but measurement is also very important because these are people who measure things.

The characteristic of these who are traveling merchants, etc., is that they give me things such as, for example, measuring the height of the pyramids of Egypt, everything is done and now with measure in measure means of a certain a certain rational approach to the world another for example another phrase is from solon is that family his famous phrase of know yourself not if you know yourself that Socrates will pick up again with another meaning know yourself meant In ancient times, know that you have your limitations and do not believe that you are immortal, do not believe that you can be like a hero of yesteryear, do not know yourself, know yourself, another phrase from Wales, perhaps it is nothing too much.

In the same way, we must remember that the Greeks were from a relatively poor world; the Greek world cannot be compared in grandeur with the Egyptian world or with the Persian world. These are the great cities of Persia or the world of the pyramids. and those enormous armies of slaves etcetera etcetera no and their limited world but from that limitation is where the depth of Greek thought will come from there is another phrase that says that attending to the opportune moment knows the cairo fallen is to achieve in Greek the opportune moment and Another phrase that is from Thales and that is closely related to this era of commerce says pay bail and now you have ruin, you have to think a little about the world, there is a little of the distrust that existed among the Greeks because the Greeks are also very cunning and astute as always and this is the time of late trade the trade of currency the currency had been invented at the beginning of the seventh century and the sixth century precisely in that part of Lydia in the north of this of the of the peninsula that today It is Turkey, King Carl, that probably has that form of rich because they already handled coins and another and another periandr who was from Corinth and who was a tyrant and who Plato excluded from the wise, he said everything is practice, the fundamental thing is practice, what is called mili tea and finally about villas that we don't know much about villas that was from priene we know that he was a great judge there is a phrase highly praised by him here what he says the majority are bad today place I am here coach k coi say the majority are courage which is a curious phrase for a judge, in any case, I think it means bad, it means of poor quality, it does not mean that they are evil, it means that the majority are clumsy, stupid people, etc., but it is also something that will be very extra, very nestled in the Greek thought and I already said that Heraclitus, who had a very bad temper, said that the only intelligent one of the seven was Vias, who had said this that the majority are bad, along with the maxims, there were also small sentences circulating or small no-maize, for example with a species of riddles what is the oldest god what is the largest thing in space what is the most beautiful thing in the universe what is the wisest time without this kind of somewhat colloquial wisdom is what is transmitted along with the images of the Of the seven, the seven, as I say, were also very successful in representations for a long time.

Let's see, ah, sorry, I put this skill in. Here is a mosaic. This is an Italian mosaic from near Rome from the first century, which is sometimes known as the name of Plato's school but I believe that it is not the mouse school that is the seven wise men and you see that they are gathered there in an environment in a familiar environment because it is also very important that the seven wise men related according to the law according to the old news very cordially it is curious that being from such separate places in each of a city they had good relations that we cannot completely stewart because it is legendary but there were even some meetings of the wise men and plutarch already told them I will tell you that later he wrote a book in which he wrote a small book called The Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, that is, one of the things that characterizes the wise men is the harmony in three different cities.

You think that the Greeks, the Greek cities, often fought among themselves. one with the other but on the other hand in wisdom it seems that those who unify them from these as I say some from a place like Sparta in others from Athens the other from milito but it is created as a kind of atmosphere atmosphere of wisdom around them apart from this this is a mosaic from the first century Italian Christ that is a mosaic from Mérida this is a mosaic from the fourth century after Christ that is to say more or less from the time of Theodosius perhaps it was a relative or a friend of the emperor Theodosius that he was from that area or that he had built a wonderful house and with these mosaics and as in you it is a very curious mosaic goodprojection was a little a little inclined where up up there are the seven wise men who have their names in Greek in Greek and I don't know I don't know if the craftsman who made the mosaic would have been Greek on the 20th he probably copied and copied something a model What would it be, but don't let it be curious that a man there in Extremadura in a Roman, a Roman from the fourth century, had that mosaic in the main hall to show that he was a cultured man.

He knew who the seven wise men were and they also had their names clearly placed there. In Greek, the area below is rarer, the area below, as you can see, where three naked warriors appear, one is wearing a helmet, but we have a blacksmith and a dressed woman. Someone thinks that it refers to the beginning of the Iliad, that this would be the scene in this scene. first of the dispute between Agamemnon and Achilles over the Chryseid girl who has just returned to her father and there is the scene and that would be the beginning of the Iliad.

The contrast between the two scenes is still curious. On the one hand, the scene epic below that also has a cultural meaning is to warn people listen here we know we know about the Iliad we know who the heroes were wants to be in the Greek beings the helmet could be Agamemnon and the other could be one Achilles maybe the other Ulysses and the other, the slave is in question, briseid or chryseid, not the contrast between the eastern world and the world of the wise, which is a world that you already see, venerable characters dressed, etc., the first is kilo new three of the one on the side of only one Finally they put the names here, I don't read them well but the names were there and it is very curious that this was represented, as I say, in a great mansion from the fourth century, that is, the fourth century.

It is very difficult for someone to know Greek but they knew the great wisdom came from this ancient world and there are no other mosaics in Spain that also have scenes from Greek mythology but this mythology has the seven wise men who are also in other places. It is curious that the images of the seven wise men are in the middle ages in many byzantine churches both and in jerusalem for example and on mount athos and even in romania and bulgaria there are churches where the seven wise men are or some of the seven wise men mixed with the prophets in such a way that it is The diffusion and prestige enjoyed by these figures, most of whom we know very little about, is astonishing.

We must remember to begin by remembering a famous phrase by Nietzsche regarding the prestige that the wise men had in Greece. famous mythical heroes called by the gods the three Greeks emerged the wise men who were experts in theoretical personal knowledge to the practical part he says the beginning is a clear and unforgettable trace of the essence the erika other peoples have saints the Greeks have wise men it has been said that a people that has been characterized not so much by its great men as by the way in which it recognizes and honors them, but only among the Greeks the philosopher is not an accidental phenomenon, that is, with these, the series of Greek thinkers begins, on the other hand, Aristotle in His book about philosophy said that the word wise software is used in several senses and the third sense is the one that refers to these characters who applied their attention to civic affairs and invented laws and everything that consolidates the citizen order in this intellectual activity was also called sophia wisdom and to this type belong the seven wise men who invented the political virtues of it.

It is curious that after the wise men we will no longer speak of wise men properly but rather of seekers of philosophy for where sophia is found. To say that the philosophers, both Pythagoras and then Socrates, truly reject the name of wise man, Sophos are not simply philosophers, that is, lovers of wisdom, seekers of wisdom, and there are also the sophists who are a variant of the wise man but they are already dedicated to teaching these seven Wise men are not city people, this explicit reference to the seven and their time appears in a political framework in a very receptive cultural environment where there is enormous freedom of thought without entering into competition with the priests.

Remember that in ancient Greece the Priests were simply experts in ceremonies and rites and there was no dogmatic oppression nor was there any sacred text in children. The Greeks never had sacred texts except in some sects, perhaps the Zoologists or the Pythagoreans, but in principle in Greece there was always great freedom of thought because the priests were not the ones who told the myths nor those who kept, let's say, the old traditions, but rather those who fulfilled the religious myths and could be from one god and from another. However, the influence of thinkers in the invention of ideas is very important. laws that are now put in writing at the service of the cities and whatever you had seen called political virtues, we must remember that the important thing in the laws is that they are put in writing, that is, there is still no democracy, let's say This time is still an aristocratic time and the kings have been abolished in most cities in other places like in Sparta there are two kings but they have a little relevant role when it comes to war but what there is is the sense that the law is written, that is a great progress of the Greek world since the seventh and sixth centuries, that is to say, there we can no longer depend on the decision of the powerful but rather depend on the writing.

The wise men are therefore a kind of guides in the art of living together in the city we must remember that in the city in Greek society the previous competitors were the poets inspired by the muses daughters of memory the poets were in fact the first teachers of truth the guardians of the long oral tradition heroic and aristocratic and of the great pan-Hellenic myths, the poets also, although he does not say so, Aristotle were considered wise par excellence and in his poems a complete knowledge about the world was transmitted. Plato later indicated in depth the prestige of the poets, but now Before, he only has a very curious phrase that says a lot: poets lie in Greek because of the meeting and he has heard and this is a kind of criticism, a kind of criticism of that world.

The poets continued to be very important in school. The Greeks did not study any books. sacred but they studied they knew Homer's poems by heart and in some of the seven wise men he was a poet like the one just mentioned, but his elegies express a search for knowledge different from that of the epic, they do not evoke the exploits of the heroes of the past but the companies of the present and when he invokes the muses it is not so that they speak of the heroes and the gods but to protect the city in justice and protect the benevolent laws that he himself has composed, he used poetic expression, he wrote elegies for publish and disseminate their ideal ideas to expose the truth not only as political propaganda, we must remember that of course at that time in the sixth century, although the majority of Greeks already knew how to write and read, the alphabet spread rapidly throughout the Mediterranean from the 99th century onwards.' The Greeks, you know, perfected the alphabet, which has a certain Phoenician origin.

The Greeks invented signs for vowels and that represented enormous intellectual progress that perhaps one does not realize because you think that where there is a culture with an alphabet, everyone can easily access to writing everyone knows how to read and write because that is learned immediately in a culture without an alphabet, for example, I have an ideological system with the Egyptian world with the Chinese world, those who know how to write are very few, very few have to be experts In writing they have to dedicate those years and years like the Chinese mandarins or the Egyptian scribes but a culture that is not alphabetic will never reach democracy, however in Greece that happens that happens very soon well, as I told you, the wise men had a historical existence we know little about the lives of many of them but it is likely that all of them could see the solar eclipse of the year 585, they would be over 40 years old, others would be 20, but that eclipse may have been the one that predicted such of Miletus when we talk later about I will tell you that Tales had enormous prestige and it is very curious because Tales has never been discussed.

He claims to be not only a wise man but the first philosopher and we do not know that anyone has read any of Such's books but we know great intellectual feats of Such as predicting an eclipse predicting an eclipse we don't know we don't know how he did it we don't know if he told me exactly the day or he predicted approximately it requires having a high level of knowledge in astronomy we don't know if for that such would resort to oriental knowledge from the world of the Babylonians bones where they had had many many data or how he did it but but it is very important because the poet Pindar still sees the eclipse as a miracle there is a phrase there is a poem by Pindar that remembers that suddenly Zeus turned the night into the day and that It could be a cause for fear, but if an eclipse can be predicted, it means that the entire world, even the sun, is subject to laws and that fits very well within the thought, that is, the world is a mechanism and that is what is happening to them.

It means from since you can predict eclipses if you can predict the tides etc. the world works and no it no longer depends on the whim of the gods among the seven as I say this room via pithacus of mytilene cleobulus of beautiful kilos of sparta and periander and Corinthian fast Periander whom Plato has deleted and has introduced another character in his place no less important because he was a tyrant so Plato who was very moralistic cannot accept that a tyrant is considered a wise man of Periander we know some things from the car that they tell tremendous things about this period that on the other hand was very cultured and had full meetings with wise men and such and that is perhaps not the only tyrant of the group because the pita was with travis he was a tyrant but it is important that There would have been not only legislators, most of these wise men were legislators but also tyrants and I will comment on that in relation to only he did not want to be a tyrant and left the place for Pisces.

He tried well in the lists of the wise men. Sometimes others appear. There are three more exotic names about the wise men, they are called the seven wise men and three more who are epimenides, who decree was a kind of shaman who performed miracles, etc., Pérez and Cyrus, who was an oriental theologian, and Anacharsis, they are quoted as being a character. very interesting and that Plutarch will still collect because he is the barbarian who enters civilization and adapts to civilization and that is a new type, it is a new type within the Greek world, you already know what you need, they were in the north of Galicia and they had fame of being especially barbarians and they lived they were nomads they lived on chariots with rolling wheels they also had the ugly habit of sometimes using the skulls of their enemies as cups etc. in short the Scythians were barbarians but anacharsis is the excita that enters the world of the wise men and he becomes friends with the wise men and then he has many criticisms to make about the Greeks and this character also appears.

The names change according to tradition. The seven had good relations and dealings with each other and they wrote letters and attended some banquet in the moat in the afternoons or in Corinth in the impossible talks of the wise men that he tells in tarcos in a curious vector text. Notice that when I talk about this, they are from very distant times. Plutarch is between the first and second centuries after Christ, that is, more than six hundred years after the wise men, this mosaic is almost a thousand years after the wise men, but when Plutarch writes, he speaks of the banquet in which everyone gathered and spoke and showed that desire for harmony, that vision of wisdom as something kind and it is in the banquet it is known that the banquet for the Greeks was a place above all more than to eat to talk friendly and it is curious that who has left us the most news about the wise men sa and diogenes laertius who is a scholar from the second third century after christ who wrote a very famous, very long book full of humor and anecdotes called that book of lives and opinions of the most illustrious wise men and where the first ones appear.

The first book of the ten is dedicated to the wise men but curiously this is a character who writes in the third century after Christ and he was a scholar and he invented he has the best anecdotes about the wise men, he tells how they were such, which gives an idea of ​​how this prestige was maintained beyond fiction, the anecdotes symbolically express an important fact all They shared a similar way of thinking, a similar attitude and convergent wisdom, they were, so to speak, masters of political coexistence based on reason and citizen agreement. They have examples of very serious knowledge at a time of serious economic crises through reason and good advice. wise men tried to introduce order in the polis, as Cicero and Plutarch had already begun, they were very beneficial to the cities for their civic excellence, what in Greek is called art, sometimes the word for virtue in art in the time of Homer, art was typical of The warriors to the east of a warrior is courage but the dt of these characters is wisdom and they had the ability to promote peace and political coexistence, which is why the rivers love the techné, the political technique of the city, perhaps with the exception of such that he was rather a theorist and scientist, the others surely had an important role in his city, the case ofhe was a judge, just a legislator, with a kind of referee in the social struggles of Mytilene and fighting a tyrant in the prosperous and seafaring city of Corinth, but he even gave political advice to his citizens, as I tell you in only two characters of Here they have a kind of biography or we can draw a certain profile of what they did, who are Tales of Miletus on the Ionian coast and only of Athens.

Regarding Talles, we must remember that Talles was not only the first philosopher but also founded a species. of philosophical school that they will later follow Anaximander who was already a philosopher in the strict sense and Anaximenes in militó and eto'o milito was one of the great Ionian cities and the other the other is only hall was from Athens and always appears as one of the great heroes of wisdom of Athens surely the being of Athens has benefited a lot in the great fame of Solon according to Plutarch he is the wisest of all abc four words about such and about that what are the only two practically that we know of all of these is curious The enormous prestige that he had from very early on was always unanimously considered the first of the wise men, the inaugurator of the series of pre-Socratic philosophers, that is, the researchers of the nature of the cosmos, cosmos is a word that still does not appear until Anaximander Anaximander already said called the universe cosmos incredible cosmos means order and it is very important that the Greeks come from the beginning the nature of the crisis as a cosmos was simply treated by investigating nature to see what laws it had the same as a city to be in order has its laws, nature must also have its laws.

He was assigned to such a multitude of knowledge and interests. He was an astronomer, a physicist, a geometer, a traveler, a student of the natural world in a broad sense, with a kind of multifaceted savant, a sophos of extraordinary theoretical ability, originally from a coastal city of merchants. Since Miletus was open to the east and west, Per said exactly an eclipse of the sun, an intellectual feat of tremendous resonance in his time. He measured the height of the Egyptian pyramids from their shadows. Probably what he did is that he took a cane or something like that. and calculating the shadow of the staff and the length of the staff by the shadow of the pyramids, he measured the means its height which is not that he climbed up and dita diverted the course of the river alice at the request of the king 3 or return but it is a historical kingdom but very fabulous too and here he diverted a river he formulated geometric theorems and in his capacity as a philosopher he reached two magnificent and surprising conclusions the two phrases that are preserved from him that the foundation of everything is water the pre-Socratic philosophers were looking for the foundation of physis, physics is a multitude of very diverse phenomena, etc., but it must have a root, its foundation, what the rivers call art and such, he said, is the water, good in the gods, they are left aside, it is no longer the world of the gods but an element like water probably meant how humid Aristotle when he comments tells me that life is in the humidity that many things come from the sea, etc., it may also influence the idea that the Egyptians had that the earth floats on water for plants. share that idea that the earth was a kind of disk floating on the water and also said that everything is full of gods pantaleón a strange phrase that means that everything is full of gods probably means that in modern terms that behind the matter there is energy in our translation and it says a phrase says the magnesium stone has a soul that is the magnet has demand that is to say such is what the commission of such is that behind the visible things there is an energy there are forces that must be investigated and That's what he calls something divine, everything is full of gods.

In short, with his cosmic explanations, he broke with the mythical tradition of reality and paved the way for rational reflections on the foundations of reality. He was a man of many ideas. He also proposed that those in the cities Conicas met in a confederation to resist the Persians but they did not do it, perhaps they did not pay attention to him and all those cities immediately fell into the power of the Persians we do not know we would like to know if he wrote a book is there any reference is there any reference from them to the book of Thales but no Greek seems to have ever seen that book.

What are the phrases? As a curiosity, it doesn't hurt to remember a very well-known ancient way that wants to make fun of the wise man who is, another that tells that while he was looking at the stars he fell into a well and then the maid behind, as she had started to laugh, there is no book called the laughter of the Thracian girl who makes fun of such because we no no where she puts her feet because she is looking at the stars that would be a kind of caricature of the theoretical wise man but there is another anecdote that is more practical with a contrary intention that tells that by foreseeing, we do not know how, for astronomical reasons that the next harvest of olives in his area would be abundant by the kilo in advance all the oil mills so that he could impose the tastes, sorry for the prices of the grinding with which he became rich and demonstrated that from knowledge you can also obtain economic benefits.

This is an old anecdote that shows that well, foreseeing things, knowledge can be used for certain gains, well, here it is These digital figures have been drawn a little, which is curious about the indisputable style of indisputable prestige that the other had. The other wise man about whom we have great clearer news is the Athenian Solon, first because he was from Athens and then also because he was a poet we preserve his works of Solon we know more than anyone else not only because he is Athenian but because we constitute long fragments of his poems and testimonies of his laws and he elaborated some laws of Athens that Aristotle praises in the constitution of the Athenians Plutarch wrote a life of Solon collects authentic news and presents him to us as a far-reaching social reformer.

I will not comment here but the most important thing is that he established a census of the population, distinguished four social groups within society according to economic income, there were the benign penta coso and who Those who had 500 measures of wheat a year in income were among the hippies, the knights who had enough property to have horses and armor, there were the jugets, who were those who had at least a pair of oxen, and there were the so-called cetes, who were the poor. Those who had nothing but were free, this division is curious because you see that no reference is made to families because before, the important thing in Athens was those who were natives, those who were from noble families and those who were newcomers or They came from more humble families, but here the important thing is the economy and this makes them sorry, only this division limited a lot the benefits of the powerful, it managed to imitate the civil war in a very difficult moment because I tell you, the sixth century is a book.

It is a time of great social conflicts because trade, the introduction of currency, travel make the economy change a lot and there are many poor people and there were also many new rich people and such also sorry, I say such is the room and only the position improved a lot of ethics and making it a city enriched with commerce, work and justice of a law that children only had to take care of their parents and their parents had taken care of their education and had given them a job prohibited slavery for debts that many poor people existed when they no longer had anything to offer to obtain food what they enslaved themselves that was prohibited from the salon era in their poems they present themselves with a champion of justice the dam balanced man who rejects the abuses of some and others and seeks moderation the sof rossini we have two great poems by him long joys one called eunomia que un mile means good laws and another is called the poem the elegy to the muses it is curious the contrast between the ethical poets who invoked the muses to tell him the myths why to the ball of the gods and the heroes and the salon muses to whom he asks above all justice justice to maintain justice and balance there is a phrase that says I I would like to be rich I like to be rich but I don't want to get rich unjustly and he maintains the idea that justice always triumphs in the end and that Zeus the supreme god the supreme god is the guarantor that justice is carried out in society this something of this He had already said, it was the one he wanted, he had already done something, but that's what the room says it in a much clearer way.

After acting for a long time as a solo legislator, he didn't want to. He didn't want to seize power. He didn't want to become a tyrant. He saw that the The conflictive situation persisted below his laws and he preferred to go on a trip, undertake trips, he would surely go. The Greeks really liked going to Egypt. The wise Greeks all went to Egypt still, because it shows in the car. The Greeks have always looked a lot at the Egyptians also also thought that Egyptians were very strange but they were always one of those who had also gone to the hall and other thinkers will travel a lot.

The curious thing about Solon who also visited the king entered in the afternoons and I and other places is that the other says who made a trip what I say theories heineken means by theory by theoretical desire that is to say he undertook a trip let's say to see the world he is the first intellectual tourist with intellectual desire who travels that is what the lotus will do, he is the great traveler in that sense but Herodotus is because he then plans to write his story and tell us everything he has seen but he had only traveled before and he has created a beautiful sentence for us that says I grow old learning many things in polar hatches cumin that is to say learning is not a thing of youth In other verses he messes with a miner poet who had said that after youth there was nothing interesting in life and when one no longer enjoys the pleasures of Aphrodite, he said miner, it is no longer worth living, change is only against him, he says. correct those verses friend and he is the first to speak well of old age and I remember he says that beautiful phrase I learn many things as I grow old.

The philosophers must have died old in the hall happened to him in Athens Pisces deal who is the great tyrant of Athens but an enlightened tyrant who will carry out the reforms the path of democracy it is curious that democracy Athenian democracy does not come directly from Solon although it was always considered that he was only the that opened the paths of democracy with this idea that justice should protect the poorest that the rich should limit their perks that the powerful should adjust to the city but that democracy comes from the reforms of Pisces treated that, being a tyrant, he overthrew the powerful aristocrats and opened many many reforms, which is that then the democrats of the three that you step on would follow.

For example, he is the inventor of the theater, the introducer of the theater in classical Athens of the others. The wisest ones, the truth is that there was little to say, some of us know them even because of the insults of some poet, for example, Pythacus of Mytilene, we know him from the verses of Elk or the Ceo of Inverse, the ill-born Pythacus has been chosen as tyrant of this city. without sense and and all the idiots proclaim their praises, let's say he had his some wise man because as he had his enemies Periander was also a quite violent tyrant at times and that is why Plato excludes him from this quilon of Sparta we know little about him perhaps it was a -forum Spartan was a fiery then famous for its wise men, you know that Sparta stagnated from the fifth century onwards, it was a stagnant regime, a regime that we call military or warrior where war and weapons dominated and there was no progress, but perhaps Chilon.

He was the one who established in Sparta a system of government that was very curious because there were two kings, hereditary kings, there was a diarchy of kings who had warrior functions, above all, there was a council, a council of forums, a council, let's say, of legislators, and then there was the assembly. assembly of warriors and perhaps Chilon is the one who achieved a certain balance in this good system of those of the wise men together with others we do not know we do not know much more that it is convenient to insist that in the sixth century a time of tremendous social conflicts in all the cities agitated by the introduction of currency for commerce and the appearance of the new rich compared to the nobles of yesteryear with a multitude of poor as witnesses in the poets of the time and who already have new written laws and new social habits these wise men acted exemplarily, that is, they were theoretical wise men and pragmatic wise men, they were progressive in their own way and precursors of future democracies, seekers of a civic order balanced by reason and not only already founded on tradition, they were enemies of violence and the old injustice based In the prejudices of the blood, the inherited land and the strength of the warlike aristocrats, curiously, they have remained in tradition as a group, a group that is quite united, quite united, a legendary group and the curious thing is that this prestige has been maintained for centuries and centuries, as I say, in the Byzantine world they began to mix with the Christian prophets who had nothing to do with it but they are still there, for example in this curious mosaic of Mérida by someone from the fourth century, by a Spaniard, probably a high-ranking Spaniard. class that in hishouse in his country house he remembers the seven wise men with their names in Greek and contrasts them with the heroes of the Iliad well and this is simply a little this this evocation of these famous characters of whom we know little but who have remained there as rare examples of wisdom opening the way to what would later be philosophy and great thought forced thanks