Concerning the father of
Bion [he himself said]: "having not a face but writing on his face,[1] a token of the severity of his master. As to my mother, she was the sort of woman that sort of man would marry -- from a brothel."[2]
*su/mbolon: peri\ *bi/wnos tou= patro/s: e)/xwn ou) pro/swpon, a)lla\ suggrafh\n e)pi\ tou= prosw/pou, th=s tou= despo/tou pikri/as su/mbolon. mh/thr de\ oi(/an o( toiou=tos gh/mai, a)p' oi)kh/matos.
Abridged from
Diogenes Laertius 4.46, where the philosopher
Bion of Borysthenes (c.335-c.245; J.L. Moles in OCD(4) s.v., under
Bion(1), makes these fictionalized self-deprecating claims about his origins to 'Antigonus' (= king A. II Gonatas). The king, in this account, had posed the Homeric (
Odyssey 10.325) questions 'Who among men, and whence, are you? What is your city and parents?';
Bion's defiant answer, in response to his detractors Persaeus (
pi 1368) and
Philonides, ends equally Homerically (with
Iliad 6.211).
[1] i.e. a slave's brand.
[2] For this term for brothel see
omicroniota 60.
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