Delphic maxims

[Lunesoleil]

The Wisdom of the Ancients left us a legacy of maxims engraved in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. You're probably already familiar with some of them, but did you know that there were 147 more?

Here they are:

1. Follow the Gods
2. Obey the law
3. Worship the gods
4. Respect your parents
5. Fight for justice
6. Learn from your experiences
7. Analyze what you've heard
8. Know yourself
9. Cultivate the desire to marry
10. Act at the right time
11. Think like a mortal
12. If you're a stranger, act like one
13. Honor your home
14. Control yourself
15. Help your friends
16. Control your anger
17. Exercise caution
18. Esteem providence
19. Don't give oaths
20. Love friendship
21. Persists despite difficulties
22. Seeks honor
23. Be a friend of wisdom
24. Praise what is good
25. Denigrate no one
26. Praise virtue
27. Do what is right
28. Support your friends
29. Watch out for your enemies
30. Exercise the nobility of your character
31. Abstain from wickedness
32. Be impartial
33. Protect what is yours
34. Do not covet what belongs to others
35. Listen to everyone
36. Keep a good reputation
37. Do your friends a favor
38. Don't overdo it
39. Don't waste your time
40. Take care of your future
41. Despise insolence
42. Respect beggars
43. Be accommodating in all things
44. Educate your sons
45. Be generous with what you have
46. Beware of deception
47. Always speak well of others
48. Be a seeker of wisdom
49. Give preference to what is sacred
50. Act only when you know
51. Turn away from the desire to kill
52. Pray for things that are possible
53. Consult the wise
54. Test your interlocutor's morality
55. Offer to others what you have received
56. Don't suspect anyone
57. Use your skills
58. Do what you set out to do
59. Honor all those who benefit you
60. Don't be jealous of anyone
61. Be vigilant
62. Always be hopeful
63. Despise the slanderer
64. Earn your living with honesty
65. Praise good men
66. Know the judge
67. Preserve your marriage
68. Seize your chance
69. Avoid making promises
70. Let your word be unequivocal
71. Make friends with those who are like you
72. Control your spending
73. Be happy with what you have
74. Respect the shame of those who admit they were wrong
75. Be willing to help
76. Pray for happiness
77. Learn to love your lot
78. Analyze what you've heard
79. Work for what you want to have
80. Despise conflict
81. Despise shame
82. Hold your tongue
83. Refrain from insolence
84. Judge fairly
85. Use what you have
86. Judge incorruptibly
87. Accuse only if your defendant is present
88. Speak only if you know
89. Do not act violently
90. Live without sorrow
91. Be gentle with others
92. Finish the race without being intimidated
93. Treat others with kindness
94. Don't curse your children
95. Guide your wife (my favorite)
96. Be kind to yourself
97. Be courteous
98. Answer on time
99. Fight gloriously
100. Act in a way you won't regret
101. Repent of your sins
102. Control what your eye sees
103. Decide in time
104. Act quickly
105. Preserve your friendships
106. Be grateful
107. Pursue harmony
108. Keep a secret
109. Fear those in power
110. Seek your own interest
111. Accept the necessary measure
112. Get rid of your enemies
113. Accept old age
114. Do not boast of your strength
115. Cultivate discretion
116. Avoid hatred
117. Acquire your wealth fairly
118. Do not forsake honor
119. Despise evil
120. venture prudently into danger
121. Never tire of learning
122. Be thrifty
123. Respect the oracles
124. love those you teach
125. do not criticize someone who is absent
126. Respect the elders
127. Teach the youngest
128. Don't trust wealth
129. Respect yourself
130. Don't let pride be born in you
131. Honor your ancestors by placing wreaths on their graves
132. Sacrifice yourself for your country
133. Don't be dissatisfied with life
134. Do not mock the dead
135. Share the burden of the unfortunate
136. Be generous without ulterior motives
137. Don't be sad about everything
138. Give birth to children of noble lineage
139. Make no promises to anyone
140 Don't try to deceive the dead
141. As a mortal, be happy
142. Don't rely on luck
143. As a child, behave yourself
144. Control your passions as a teenager
145. Adult, be just
146. Old man, give good advice
147. At your last moment, have no regrets

And which Delphic maxims are you thinking of?

[Raskolnikov]

Further proof our true history has been erased by those who profit from, and feed off (loosh), our ignorance. So much simplicity. So much wisdom. Thank you Lunesoleil for posting. "19. Don't give oaths." OH - MY - GOD! Speaks volumes of the misdirection of our legal system which is no longer a system based on natural law. "56. Don't suspect anyone." Oh, for the simpler days before these parasites invaded out beautiful world, before we accepted them. "63. Despise the slanderer." The inversion and irony. "87. Accuse only if your defendant is present." I'll hold my tongue. "88. Speak only if you know." All guilty. "109. Fear those in power." The lives that could have been saved. "121. Never tire of learning." Yes!!!

So much wisdom and sound advice. The more I learn in this life the more I realize how little I know. But it's beautiful and necessary. It endows us with curiosity, the curiosity of a child, and isn't that what the world's religions have always espoused? "If you want a new idea, read an old book." The wisdom of the ancients, buried is an understatement.

I could go on and on but my take is that our past is so much more than we've been led to believe. The only maxim I won't agree with is "132. Sacrifice yourself for your country." But today there are no more countries, simply varied and outstretched arms of a worldwide web of corruption. I'll sign off with more wisdom from that same epoch and say thank you again Lunesoleil for posting. These words were written at the entrance to the Temple of Apollo in Delphi by the sibyls who were wise women trained from childhood to reveal the message of the oracles:

“I warn you, whoever you are, Oh! You who want to probe the “Arcana of Nature”, that if you do not find “within yourself” that which you are looking for, you shall not find it outside either! If you ignore the excellences of your own house, how do you pretend to find other excellences? Within you is hidden the treasure of treasures! “Know Thyself” and you will know the Universe and the Gods.”

[shaberon]

More than just the maxims I would say it is a complete system.

One of the other things that has been lost but recently worked on is the Gaulish language.

From this, we can make a double review.

In my personal case, I am someone who can find Gaulish heritage and then all the records run out. Before around the year 500 hardly anything is recorded. And so I look at a tribe with the Latin spelling "Lexovii" and what is that. Nothing to do with the Roman word for "law" or anything like that. They simply record some common name. And one of the only surrounding evidences suggests it means "lame", according to an ally in a battle. If that was what it meant, if that was their reputation, would you be asking them to defend against the Romans? It doesn't seem a likely choice.

On a pre-Roman cultural level, instead, there is enough reason to consider it a form of Apollo Lykeios, which is thoroughly distinguished from Apollo Lykaios. The latter has been used to make a story about Wolf Apollo, for which there is no original evidence. It only means that Apollo was considered present at Mt. Lykaion; it says nothing about a wolf, or anything else, because it doesn't say anything.

The first one however is very widespread and is named for the Lyceum of Athens:




Ἀπόλλων Λύκειος, Apollōn Lukeios

Its main exemplar is the Apollino in Florence or Apollo Medici, in the Uffizi, Florence.

In French, there is still a lycee' which is evidently Greek not Latin, and it is this.

I am pretty sure the Gaulish times were receptive to Greek knowledge.

Ancient Lycia was Anatolian-speaking Lukka until being over-run by the Achaemenids, having:


Letoon, an important center in Hellenic times of worship for the goddess Leto and her twin children, Apollo and Artemis...



Lycia --> Apollo Lyceum


Later, as adjoined with Mithraism, considering he produced a prayer compatible with Serapis, Mithra, and Apollo Sol Invictus, here is the scene when Constantine initially was at Trier/Grand, and the extend of the solar cult in Gaul:





My understanding is that all represents a form of "mixing", rather than any kind of forced conversion, indoctrination, etc., it is like non-Greeks understanding whatever the Greeks are saying, blended in to their native understanding. By the time of this map, it is dominated by Rome, but you do have a fairly similar pagan system in multiple languages from Scotland to India, Delphi being a famous part of it.