Lives of the Eminent Philosophers
Book I .
Of songs still sung these verses belong to him:
Here too are certain current apophthegms assigned to him:
I may also cite one of my own, from my first book, Epigrams in Various Metres
Solon inserted one of his own:
That he foresaw the tyranny of Pisistratus is proved by a passage from a poem of his:
Of the songs sung this is attributed to Solon:
The inscription on his statue runs thus:
His apophthegm is: Give a pledge, and suffer for it. A short letter is also ascribed to him.
To him belongs the apophthegm, Know thine opportunity.
and Hipponax thus: More powerful in pleading causes than Bias of Priene.
For this earns most gratitude the headstrong spirit often flashes forth with harmful bane.
His apophthegm was: Moderation is best. And he wrote to Solon the following letter:
There is also an epigram of my own in the Pherecratean metre:
Book II .
I also have written an epigram upon him:
And again he calls Euripides an engine riveted by Socrates. And Callias in The Captives :
This disdainful, lofty spirit of his is also noticed by Aristophanes when he says:
There is another on the circumstances of his death:
Aristippus, however, put on the dress and, as he was about to dance, was ready with the repartee:
The pun upon καινοῦ (new) and καὶ νοῦ (mind as well) recurs vi. 3.
Book III
Moreover, there are verses of Timon which refer to Plato:
Then there is Timon who puns on his name thus:
And Alexis in the Olympiodorus :
Anaxilas, again, in the Botrylion Circe Rich Women
This, they say, was actually inscribed upon his tomb at Syracuse.
Simon was a citizen of Athens and a cobbler. When Socrates came to his workshop and began to converse, he used to make notes of all that he could remember. And this is why people apply the term "leathern" to his dialogues. These dialogues are thirty-three in number, extant in a single volume:
Others are:
He was the first, so we are told, who introduced the Socratic dialogues as a form of conversation. When Pericles promised to support him and urged him to come to him, his reply was, "I will not part with my free speech for money."
There was another Simon, who wrote treatises On Rhetoric; another, a physician, in the time of Seleucus Nicanor; and a third who was a sculptor.