Monday, November 19, 2012

On the Life of Secundus the Philosopher (c. 130 CE)

As I was going through Bar Hebraeus and came across a reference to 'Secundus the philosopher' whom I had never heard of before.  I came across this description from Wikipedia - "We are told that he was sent away from home to be educated when he was a small boy. When he was an adult he decided to test the proposition that every woman is a whore. So he returned home dressed as a Cynic philosopher with long hair and a beard, and, unrecognisable to his own mother, he persuaded her to agree to sleep with him for fifty gold pieces. After he had spent the night with her, doing nothing more than sleeping chastely in her bed, he told her who he was. Shamed, his mother hanged herself, and Secundus, blaming his own tongue for the trouble he caused, committed himself to a lifelong vow of silence, for which reason he is also described as a Pythagorean philosopher."


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