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Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica/The Precepts of Chiron

From Wikisource

New Haven: Harvard University Press, pages 73–75

THE PRECEPTS OF CHIRON

1.

"And now, pray, mark all these things well in a wise heart. First, whenever you come to your house, offer good sacrifices to the eternal gods."

2.

"Decide no suit until you have heard both sides speak."

3.

"A chattering crow lives out nine generations of aged men, but a stag's life is four times a crow's, and a raven's life makes three stags old, while the phoenix outlives nine ravens, but we, the rich-haired Nymphs, daughters of Zeus the aegis-holder, outlive ten phoenixes."

4.

Some consider that children under the age of seven should not receive a literary education...That Hesiod was of this opinion very many writers affirm who were earlier than the critic Aristophanes; for he was the first to reject the Precepts, in which book this maxim occurs, as a work of that poet.