There are two sentences inscribed upon the Delphic oracle, hugely accommodated to the usages of man’s life: “Know thyself,”1 and “Nothing too much;” and upon these all other precepts depend.
Plutarch ascribes this saying to Plato. It is also ascribed to Pythagoras, Chilo, Thales, Cleobulus, Bias, and Socrates; also to Phemonë, a mythical Greek poetess of the ante-Homeric period. Juvenal (Satire xi. 27) says that this precept descended from heaven. [back]
