About Sotades in Plutarch's Morals

If anyone thinks it a small and unimportant matter to govern the tongue, another point I promised to touch on, he is very far from the reality.

For silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech.

And that is, I think, the reason why the ancients instituted the mysteries that we, learning therein to be silent, might transfer our secrecy to the gods to human affairs.

And no one ever yet repented of his silence, while multitudes have repented of their speaking.

And what has not been said is easy to say, while what has been once said can never be recalled.

I have heard of myriads who have fallen into the greatest misfortunes through inability to govern their tongues.

Passing over the rest, I will mention one or two cases in point.

When Ptolemy Philadelphus married his sister Arsinoe, Sotades said, "You are contracting an unholy marriage."

For this speech he long lingered in prison, and paid the righteous penalty for his unseasonable babbling, and had to weep a long time for making others laugh.

Theocritus the Sophist similarly cracked his jokes, and had to pay even a greater penalty. F

Plutarch, Plutarch's Morals (Translator: Arthur Richard Shilleto), Sometime Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, London, 1898.

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Sotades, a libellous poet, put to death

The Ionic dialect also supplies us with poems of Sotades, and with what before his time were called Ionic poems, such as those of Alexander the Ætolian, and Pyres the Milesian, and Alexas, and other poets of the same kind; and Sotades is called κιναιδόλογος.

And Sotades the Maronite was very notorious for this kind of poetry, as Carystius of Pergamus says in his essay on Sotades; and so was the son of Sotades, Apollonius: and this latter also wrote an essay on his father's poetry, from which one may easily see the unbridled licence of language which Sotades allowed himself,—abusing Lysimachus the king in Alexandria,—and, when at the court of Lysimachus, abusing Ptolemy Philadelphus,—and in different cities speaking ill of different sovereigns; on which account, at last, he met with the punishment that he deserved: for when he had sailed from Alexandria (as Hegesander, in his Reminiscences, relates), and thought that he had escaped all danger, (for he had said many bitter things against Ptolemy the king, and especially this, after he had heard that he had married his sister Arsinoe,— He pierced forbidden fruit with deadly sting,)

Patrocles, the general of Ptolemy, caught him in the island of Caunus, and shut him up in a leaden vessel, and carried him into the open sea and drowned him.

And his poetry is of this kind: Philenus was the father of Theodorus the flute-player, on whom he wrote these lines:

And he, opening the door which leads from the back-street,

Sent forth vain thunder from a leafy cave,

Such as a mighty ploughing ox might utter.

Athenaeus of Naucratis, TheDeipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 3 (Translator: Charles Duke Yonge), London, 1854. 

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Sotădes, an athlete

A Greek poet of Thrace. 

He wrote verses against Philadelphus Ptolemy, for which he was thrown into the sea in a cage of lead. 

He was called Cinædus, not only because he was addicted to the abominable crime which the surname indicates, but because he wrote a poem in commendation of it. 

Some suppose, that instead of the word Socraticos in the 2nd satire, verse the 10th, of Juvenal, the word Sotadicos should be inserted, as the poet Sotades, and not the philosopher Socrates, deserved the appellation of Cinædus. 

Obscene verses were generally called Sotadea carmina from him. 

They could be turned and read different ways without losing their measure or sense, such as the following, which can be read backwards:

Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor.

Si bene te tua laus taxat, sua laute tenebis.

Sole medere pede, ede, perede melos.

Quintilian, bk. 1, ch. 8; bk. 9, ch. 4.—Pliny, bk. 5, ltr. 3.—Ausonius, ltr. 17, li. 29.

John Lemprière – A classical dictionary, United Kingdom: George Routledge and Sons, 1904

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