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The last words attributed to Archimedes (paraphrased from Valerius Maximus' Memorable Doings and Sayings). During the raid of Syracuse by the Romans, Archimedes was busy drawing mathematical circles. He was eventually attacked and killed by a Roman soldier as he was too engrossed in thought to obey the soldier's orders.
The Delphic maxims are a set of moral precepts that were inscribed on the Temple of Apollo in the ancient Greek precinct of Delphi. The three best known maxims – "Know thyself", "Nothing in excess", and "Give a pledge and trouble is at hand" – were prominently located at the entrance to the temple, and were traditionally said to have been ...
There are more than 500 supposed oracular statements which have survived from various sources referring to the oracle at Delphi. Many are anecdotal, and have survived as proverbs. Several are ambiguously phrased, apparently in order to show the oracle in a good light regardless of the outcome.
Below is an alphabetical list of widely used and repeated proverbial phrases. If known, their origins are noted. A proverbial phrase or expression is a type of conventional saying similar to a proverb and transmitted by oral tradition.
A compilation of 147 maxims, inscribed at Delphi, was preserved by the fifth century CE scholar Stobaeus as "Sayings of the Seven Sages", [13] but "the actual authorship of the ... maxims set up on the Delphian temple may be left uncertain. Most likely they were popular proverbs, which tended later to be attributed to particular sages." [14]
The most complete text of the Instruction of Amenemope is British Museum Papyrus 10474, acquired in Thebes by E. A. Wallis Budge in early 1888. [1] [9] The scroll is approximately 12 feet (3.7 m) long by 10 inches (250 mm) wide; the obverse side contains the hieratic text of the Instruction, while the reverse side is filled with a miscellany of lesser texts, including a "Calendar of Lucky and ...
Most of these texts are wisdom in the form of dialogues or hymns, such as the Hymn to Enlil, the All-Beneficent from ancient Sumer. [6] Proverbs were particularly popular among the Sumerians, with many fables and anecdotes therein, such as the Debate Between Winter and Summer, which Assyriologist Samuel Noah Kramer has noted as paralleling the ...
Aphoristic collections, sometimes known as wisdom literature, have a prominent place in the canons of several ancient societies, such as the Sutra literature of India, the Biblical Ecclesiastes, Islamic hadiths, the golden verses of Pythagoras, Hesiod's Works and Days, the Delphic maxims, and Epictetus' Handbook. Aphoristic collections also ...