When the man from Seriphus said to him that it was not because of himself but because of his country that he was famous, Themistocles remarked, ‘ What you say is true enough; but if I were from Seriphus, I should not have become famous, nor would you if you were from Athens.’ 1
1 In almost the same words in Plutarch's Life of Themistocles, chap. xviii. (121 B), but the story goes back to Herodotus, viii. 125, where Timodemus is the speaker, and Themistocles names the island of Belbina. The man from Seriphus is found first in Plato, Republic, 329 E and persists thereafter, as in Plutarch and in Cicero, De senectute, 3 (8), and in Origen, Against Celsus, i. 29 (347 E).
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1931. 3.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This text was converted to electronic form by optical character recognition and has been proofread to a high level of accuracy.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
