The Greek maxim Χαλεπὸν τὸ ἑαυτὸν γνῶναι, ἀλλὰ μακάριον· ζῇ γὰρ κατὰ φύσιν. may be translated:
“It is difficult to know oneself, but blessed [to do so]; for one lives according to nature.”
The saying is transmitted in the later Greek gnomological and proverbial tradition under the name of Thales of Miletus. Its attribution, however, requires some qualification.
Ancient evidence does associate Thales with the idea that knowing oneself is difficult. The complete sentence quoted above, by contrast, is preserved in substantially later Byzantine collections. The ancient and medieval forms are therefore best treated as related stages in a tradition rather than as one verbatim saying securely preserved from the historical Thales.
The ancient saying attributed to Thales
The clearest ancient evidence occurs in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 1.36. Among a series of questions supposedly addressed to Thales, Diogenes writes:
Ἐρωτηθεὶς τί δύσκολον, ἔφη, “Τὸ ἑαυτὸν γνῶναι.”
That is:
“When asked what was difficult, he said, ‘To know oneself.’”
The grammar is straightforward. Ἐρωτηθείς means “when asked”; τί δύσκολον asks “what is difficult?”; and τὸ ἑαυτὸν γνῶναι is an articular infinitival expression, literally “the knowing of oneself,” or idiomatically “to know oneself.” γνῶναι is the aorist active infinitive of γιγνώσκω, and ἑαυτόν is its reflexive object.
This is genuine ancient testimony for an association between Thales and the difficulty of self-knowledge.
It should not, however, be mistaken for direct documentary evidence from the sixth century BCE. Diogenes wrote many centuries after Thales and was transmitting a developed biographical and apophthegmatic tradition. What the passage securely establishes is not that these were the philosopher’s exact historical words, but that the idea was attributed to Thales in antiquity.
Nor does Diogenes give the later expanded form. His Thales simply answers the question “What is difficult?” with “To know oneself.” There is nothing here corresponding to the later additions “but blessed” or “for one lives according to nature.”
An independent ancient parallel
The thought was not confined to the biographical tradition about Thales.
A striking parallel occurs in the work transmitted under Aristotle’s name as the Magna Moralia, 2.15 (1213a). In a discussion of friendship and self-knowledge, the author remarks:
ἐπεὶ οὖν ἐστι καὶ χαλεπώτατον … τὸ γνῶναι αὑτόν
“Since knowing oneself is indeed exceedingly difficult …”
The passage adds that, as some of the sages had said, knowing oneself is especially difficult.
This evidence is important for two reasons.
First, it confirms that the difficulty of self-knowledge was already an established theme in ancient Greek wisdom literature. Second, it does not specifically identify Thales as its author. The passage refers only to “some of the sages.”
The Magna Moralia therefore strengthens the antiquity of the idea without strengthening the individual attribution to Thales. For that attribution, Diogenes Laertius remains the clearest ancient witness.
The expanded Byzantine form
The fuller maxim appears in the medieval Greek gnomological tradition.
Leo Sternbach, while discussing the Gnomologium Vaticanum and related collections, compares witnesses in Pseudo-Maximus and Michael Apostolius and gives the saying in the form:
Χαλεπὸν τὸ ἑαυτὸν γνῶναι, ἀλλὰ μακάριον· ζῇ γὰρ κατὰ φύσιν.
Sternbach explicitly cites Pseudo-Maximus, Loci communes 56 and Apostolius XVIII 7d, saying that they place the saying under the name of Thales.
Michael Apostolius’ Collectio paroemiarum 18.7d likewise transmits:
Χαλεπὸν τὸ ἑαυτὸν γνῶναι, ἀλλὰ μακάριον· ζῆ γὰρ κατὰ φύσιν.
The reference 18.7d deserves emphasis. Immediately nearby, 18.7a is the separate proverb
Χαλεπὸν τὸ εὖ γνῶναι.
“It is difficult to know well.”
The two sayings should not be confused. Sternbach’s nineteenth-century type also gives XVIII 7d, although the superscript letter is easy for OCR software to misread.
Apostolius was a fifteenth-century Byzantine scholar, so his collection is obviously far removed chronologically from Thales. He is not, however, the earliest witness to the expanded form. Sternbach points to the substantially earlier tradition represented by Pseudo-Maximus.
Pseudo-Maximus and the date of the expanded tradition
The work conventionally called the Loci communes was traditionally attributed to Maximus the Confessor, but that attribution is not accepted as historical. It is a Byzantine sacro-profane florilegium with a complicated textual history.
Sibylle Ihm’s critical work distinguishes several recensions and reconstructs behind them a common ancestor that she calls Ur-Maximus. Her reconstruction does not provide a single date for the whole collection. Rather, it places the common ancestor after about 650, while the principal recensional forms belong to the subsequent medieval transmission, with important stages represented by the tenth century.
It is therefore preferable not to say simply that “Pseudo-Maximus was written in year X.” The Loci communes is a developing textual tradition.
For the present question, the significant point is simpler: the expanded maxim is attested in a medieval Byzantine gnomological tradition considerably earlier than Apostolius, but still many centuries later than Thales.
That chronological distinction is central to evaluating the attribution.
The textual problem in the final clause
The final words require a little textual care.
Sternbach prints:
ζῇ γὰρ κατὰ φύσιν
with ζῇ, the third-person singular present indicative of ζάω, “to live.” The natural translation is:
“for one lives according to nature.”
Sternbach also records ζῆν from Combefis. That is the present infinitive, “to live,” and represents a genuinely different syntactical reading.
An electronic transcription of Apostolius, however, prints:
ζῆ γὰρ κατὰ φύσιν.
Formally, ζῆ can be the second-person singular present imperative of ζάω: “live!”
It would be unwise, however, to conclude from the spelling alone that Apostolius preserves a deliberate imperative reading.
The historical iota represented in a form such as ζῇ had long ceased to be pronounced, and its presence or absence varies considerably in later Greek manuscript practice. The modern iota subscript itself is an editorial convention that developed in the Byzantine period. A written ζῆ can therefore represent what an editor normalizing the morphology would print as ζῇ.
Consequently, the spelling ζῆ should not be given the same textual weight as Sternbach’s explicit report of ζῆν in Combefis.
The safest account is therefore:
- Sternbach prints ζῇ, “one lives”;
- an electronic text of Apostolius prints ζῆ, which need not imply a deliberate imperative;
- Sternbach explicitly records ζῆν, “to live,” from Combefis.
The final clause thus exhibits some textual variation, but the principal substantive syntactical variant is ζῇ / ζῆν. Sternbach’s ζῇ provides the most straightforward basis for translation.
Variation at the beginning of the maxim
There is also variation earlier in the sentence.
Sternbach prints:
χαλεπὸν τὸ ἑαυτὸν γνῶναι
and expressly reports τὸ as the reading of his manuscripts and Apostolius. Combefis instead has δέ.
The expanded saying therefore circulated in more than one textual form. This is exactly what one would expect of material transmitted through gnomologia and collections of sayings over many centuries.
Such variation is another reason to speak of a traditional maxim attributed to Thales, rather than an exact quotation whose wording can confidently be carried back to the historical philosopher.
Relation to γνῶθι σαυτόν
The tradition is naturally related to the famous Delphic injunction:
γνῶθι σαυτόν
“Know thyself.”
The two sayings concern the same subject, but they should not be treated as identical texts.
γνῶθι σαυτόν is an imperative: it commands self-knowledge.
The saying reported by Diogenes Laertius 1.36 has a different rhetorical form. Thales is asked what is difficult and replies that knowing oneself is difficult. It is an observation about self-knowledge rather than a command to pursue it.
Ancient sources themselves nevertheless connect Thales with both traditions.
In Diogenes Laertius 1.40, after completing his account of Thales, Diogenes says that “Know thyself” belonged to him. He immediately records a competing tradition, however. Antisthenes attributed the saying to Phemonoe and said that Chilon had appropriated it.
The attribution was therefore disputed already in antiquity.
Pausanias offers another version of the tradition. In Description of Greece 10.24.1 he names the sages—including both Thales and Chilon—who, according to the story he reports, came to Delphi and dedicated to Apollo the celebrated sayings “Know thyself” and “Nothing in excess.”
Pausanias thus associates the Delphic precepts collectively with the Seven Sages rather than identifying one individual as their uncontested author.
It is useful, therefore, to distinguish three related but separate forms of the self-knowledge tradition:
- γνῶθι σαυτόν — the Delphic command “Know thyself,” variously attributed in antiquity and also associated collectively with the Seven Sages;
- τὸ ἑαυτὸν γνῶναι — the ancient apophthegm in Diogenes Laertius 1.36, where Thales identifies knowing oneself as something difficult;
- Χαλεπὸν τὸ ἑαυτὸν γνῶναι, ἀλλὰ μακάριον· ζῇ γὰρ κατὰ φύσιν — the expanded formulation preserved much later in Byzantine gnomological and proverbial collections under the name of Thales.
These traditions overlap in subject and attribution, but their wording, chronology, and textual transmission should remain distinct.
Conclusion
The evidence allows a fairly precise conclusion.
Ancient Greek tradition associated Thales with the difficulty of knowing oneself. The clearest testimony is Diogenes Laertius 1.36, while the Magna Moralia independently demonstrates that the difficulty of self-knowledge was regarded in antiquity as a saying of “some of the sages.”
Ancient tradition also connected Thales with γνῶθι σαυτόν, “Know thyself,” although Diogenes himself preserves a competing attribution and Pausanias associates the Delphic maxims collectively with the Seven Sages.
The fuller sentence,
Χαλεπὸν τὸ ἑαυτὸν γνῶναι, ἀλλὰ μακάριον· ζῇ γὰρ κατὰ φύσιν,
belongs to the later Byzantine gnomological transmission. Pseudo-Maximus and, later, Apostolius preserve substantially this expanded form under the name of Thales.
Its opening thought has genuine ancient antecedents, including an explicit ancient attribution to Thales. The surviving evidence does not, however, justify presenting the whole expanded sentence as the exact words of the historical Thales.
A careful attribution would therefore be:
A Byzantine gnomological maxim attributed to Thales, developing an idea already attributed to him in antiquity.
Or, in a shorter form suitable for quotation:
Attributed to Thales in the later Greek gnomological tradition.
Works Cited
Apostolius, Michael. Collectio paroemiarum. In Corpus Paroemiographorum Graecorum, vol. 2, edited by Ernst Ludwig von Leutsch, 233–744. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1851.
Aristotle [traditionally attributed]. Magna Moralia 2.15, 1213a. In Aristotelis Quae Feruntur Magna Moralia, edited by Franz Susemihl. Leipzig: Teubner, 1883.
Bibliotheca Augustana. Electronic transcription of Michael Apostolius, Collectio paroemiarum, 18.7d.
Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Edited by Tiziano Dorandi. Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries 50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Translated by R. D. Hicks. 2 vols. Loeb Classical Library 184–185. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925.
Ihm, Sibylle, ed. Ps.-Maximus Confessor: Erste kritische Edition einer Redaktion des sacro-profanen Florilegiums Loci communes nebst einer vollständigen Kollation einer zweiten Redaktion und weiterem Material. Palingenesia 73. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2001.
Pausanias. Description of Greece. Vol. 4, Books 8.22–10. Translated by W. H. S. Jones. Loeb Classical Library 297. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935.
Sternbach, Leo. “De Gnomologio Vaticano Inedito. III.” Wiener Studien 10 (1888): 211–260, especially 255.
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