thumb|Chilon (top right) on a 3rd century AD [[Roman mosaic depicting the Seven Sages, now in the National Museum of Beirut.]]

Chilon of Sparta () (fl. 6th century BC) was a Spartan politician credited with the militarization of Spartan society, and one of the Seven Sages of Greece.

Life

Chilon was the son of Damagetus, and lived towards the beginning of the 6th century BC. Herodotus speaks of him as contemporary with Hippocrates, the father of Peisistratus. Diogenes Laërtius states that he was an old man in the 52nd Olympiad (572 BC), and that he was elected an ephor (overseer) in Sparta in the 56th Olympiad (556/5 BC). Alcidamas states that he was a member of the Spartan assembly. Diogenes Laërtius even goes so far as to claim that Chilon was also the first person who introduced the custom of joining the ephors to the kings as their counselors.

thumb|Fictional portrait of Chilon by [[Luca Giordano (ca. 1660)]]

Chilon is said to have helped to overthrow the tyranny at Sicyon, which became a Spartan ally. He is also credited with the change in Spartan policy leading to the development of the Peloponnesian League in the sixth century BC. Another legend claims that he died of joy when his son gained the prize for boxing at the Olympic games, and that his funeral was attended by all the Greeks assembled at the festival. Chilon was the sage traditionally credited with the famous Delphic maxim: "Know thyself"—though this attribution is not universal, and others of the Seven Sages of Greece, or even the god Apollo himself, were also variously supposed to be its originators.

References

Further reading

  • Franz Kiechle: Chilon. In: Der Kleine Pauly, Bd. 1 (1964), Sp. 1146.
  • G.L. Huxley. Early Sparta, 1962
  • The Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers, by Diogenes Laërtius
  • Pliny, 7, c. 33.