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CHILON.
CHAP. I.
Chilon his life.
* 1.1 CHILON was a Lacedaemonian, son of Dama∣getus, corruptly termed in* 1.2 Stobaeus, Page 6. He was eminent amongst the Greeks for two pre∣dictions.
The first to Hippocrates,* 1.3 to whom (being a private person) hapned a great prodigie at the Olym∣pick games: having prepared an offering, and filled a Cauldron with flesh and water, it boiled over without fire: This portent Chilon (accidentally present) beholding, advised him that he should not take a wise by whom he might have issue; that if he had one, he should put her away, and if a son, turn him out of dores: Hippocrates not following this advice, brought up his son Pisistratus, who in the sedition of the Maritimes and country∣men at Athens, those led by Megacles, these by Lycurgus, stirred up a third faction, and gained the tyranny.
* 1.4 He was much renowwed also for his prediction concerning Cythera a Lacedaemonian Island; examining the Scituation thereof, would to God (said he) it had never been; or since it is, it might be swallowed up by the sea, and wisely did he foresee. Damaratus, a Laecedaemonian exile, counselled▪ Xerxes to seize upon that Island, which advice if he had fol∣lowed, would have ruined all Greece. His words (according to* 1.5 He∣rodotus) were these. You may effect your desires, if you send three hundred ships to the Lacedaemonian coast; there lies an Island, named Cythera, of which Chilon, a person of greatest wisdome amongst us, said, it were better for the Lacedaemonians that it were under water then above: he, it seemes, expected from it some such thing as I am now going to declare, not that he foresaw your Navy, but doubting any in the same kind; Let your men issue out of this Island upon the Lacedaemonians, to strike them into terror.* 1.6 Afterwards, in the time of the Peloponesian war, Nicias taking the Island, placed some Athenians therein, who much infested the Lacedaemonians.
Laertius saith, that he was old in the fifty two Olympiad, at what time Aesop flourish'd: that he was Ep••orus in the fiftie sixt. (Casaubon reads the fiftie five) but Pamphila (continueth Laertius) saith in the sixt. He was first Ephorus, when Euthydemus was Archon, as Sosicrates also affirmes, and first appointed the Ephori to be joyned with Kings, which Satyrus saith, was the institution of Lycurgus. Hence it is doubtfull