Callicratidas  

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"Lucian represents, of course, a late period of Attic life. But his picture of the perfect boy completes, and in some points supplements, that of Aristophanes. Callicratidas, in the Dialogue on Love, has just drawn an unpleasing picture of a woman, surrounded in a fusty boudoir with her rouge-pots and cosmetics, perfumes, paints, combs, looking-glasses, hair-dyes, and curling irons. Then he turns to praise boys:

"How different is the boy! In the morning, he rises from his chaste couch, washes the sleep from his eyes with cold water, puts on his chlamys,[105] and takes his way to the school of the musician or the gymnast. His tutors and guardians attend him, and his eyes are bent upon the ground. He spends the morning in studying the poets and philosophers, in riding, or in military drill. Then he betakes himself to the wrestling-ground, and hardens his body with noontide heat and sweat and dust. The bath follows and a modest meal. After this he returns for awhile to study the lives of heroes and great men. After a frugal supper sleep at last is shed upon his eyelids.""--A Problem in Greek Ethics (1883) by John Addington Symonds


"The fallacy of this argument from nature has been discovered as long ago as Lucian. ‘I was almost inclined to laugh,’ says Callicratidas, in one of the dialogues imputed to him, ‘just now, when Charicles was praising irrational brutes and the savagery of the Scythians: in the heat of his argument he was almost repenting that he was born a Greek. What wonder if lions and bears and pigs do not act as I was proposing? That which reasoning would fairly lead a man to choose, cannot be had by creatures that do not reason, simply because they are so stupid. If Prometheus or some other god had given each of them the intelligence of a man, then they would not have lived in deserts and mountains nor fed on one another. They would have built temples just as we do, each would have lived in the centre of his family, and they would have formed a nation bound by mutual laws. Is it anything surprising that brutes, who have had the misfortune to be unable to obtain by forethought any of the goods, with which reasoning provides us, should have missed love too? Lions do not love; but neither do they philosophise; bears do not love; but the reason is they do not know the sweets of friendship. It is only men, who, by their wisdom and their knowledge, after many trials, have chosen what is best.’" --Principia Ethica (1903) by G. E. Moore

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Callicratidas Καλλικρατίδας) was a Spartan naval commander in the Peloponnesian War. In 406 BC, he was sent to the Aegean to take command of the Spartan fleet from Lysander, the first navarch.

Biography

Callicratidas's tenure as navarch was short, and he encountered a number of difficulties. Chief among these were the intrigues of his predecessor, who had apparently returned the money from which the fleet was supposed to be paid for to its source, the Persian prince Cyrus. Callicratidas needed money from Cyrus to pay his men, but, as a traditionalist Spartan, he was loath to request it from a Persian. His halfhearted attempts to secure funding from Cyrus fell through, and he was forced to find an alternative source of funds, which the city of Miletus eventually provided.

After winning an initial victory against the Athenian admiral Conon, Callicratidas came up against a sizable Athenian force sent out to relieve Conon. He met this force at the battle of Arginusae in 406 BC. His force was soundly defeated, and Callicratidas himself was killed. After his death, Lysander returned from Sparta to again take up the post of navarch.

Callicratidas is remembered as a Spartan of the old school. He disdained the policy of alliance with Persia that had come into favor under Lysander, and he stated that if the choice were his, he would seek peace with Athens. The increasing role of money in Spartan politics and diplomacy offended his traditionalist, antimaterialist sensibilities. Although unsuccessful in his command, he won the respect of many Spartans and allies, and was well regarded after his death.

Pseudo-Callicratidas

Callicratidas is not to be confused with Pseudo-Callicratidas, the pseudonymous author of the Neo-Pythagorean treatise On the Felicity of Families. The treatise puts forward the idea that remarked that a wife's wealth may thwart her husband's rule.




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