Bias the son of Teutamus and a citizen of Priene

Priene

Priene was an ancient Greek city of Ionia at the base of an escarpment of Mycale, about north of the then course of the Maeander River, from today's Aydin, from today's Söke and from ancient Miletus...

 was a Greek

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

 philosopher. Satyrus

Satyrus the Peripatetic

Satyrus of Callatis was a distinguished peripatetic philosopher and historian, whose biographies of famous people are frequently referred to by Diogenes Laërtius and Athenaeus. He came from Callatis Pontica, as we learn from a Herculaneum papyrus...

 puts him as the wisest of all the Seven Sages of Greece

Seven Sages of Greece

The Seven Sages or Seven Wise Men was the title given by ancient Greek tradition to seven early 6th century BC philosophers, statesmen and law-givers who were renowned in the following centuries for their wisdom.-The Seven Sages:Traditionally, each of the seven sages represents an aspect of worldly...

. He was renowned for his goodness.

One of the examples of his great goodness is the legend that says that he paid a ransom for some women who had been taken prisoner. After educating them as his own daughters, he sent them back to Messina, their homeland, and to their fathers.

Honours

Also it is said that when some fishermen found The Brazen Tripod on which was inscripted: "For the Wisest", the fathers of the damsels came into an assembly. They concluded that Bias was the wisest among all men, so the tripod was presented to him as a token of gratitude for all that he had done for the city. Bias refused the honor with the words: "Apollo

Apollo

Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...

 is the wisest". Another author notes that he consecrated the tripod at Thebes to Hercules

Hercules

Hercules is the Roman name for Greek demigod Heracles, son of Zeus , and the mortal Alcmene...

.

Some of his sayings

• "The naïve men are easily fooled."
• "Most people are evil."
• "All men are wicked."
• "It is difficult to bear a change of fortune for the worse with magnanimity
  Magnanimity
  Magnanimity is the virtue of being great of mind and heart. It encompasses, usually, a refusal to be petty, a willingness to face danger, and actions for noble purposes. Its antithesis is pusillanimity...
  
  ."
• "Choose the course which you adopt with deliberation; but when you have adopted it, then persevere in it with firmness."
• "Do not speak fast, for that shows folly."
• "Love prudence."
• "Speak of the Gods as they are."
• "Do not praise an undeserving man because of his riches."
• "Accept of things, having procured them by persuasion, not by force."
• "Cherish wisdom as a means of traveling from youth to old age, for it is more lasting than any other possession."

Work

It is said that he was very energetic and eloquent when pleading causes; but that he always reserved his talents for the right side. In reference to which Demodicus of Alerius uttered the following enigmatical saying—"If you are a judge, give a Prienian decision." And Hipponax

Hipponax

Hipponax of Ephesus and later Clazomenae was an Ancient Greek iambic poet who composed verses depicting the vulgar side of life in Ionian society in the sixth century BC...

 says, "More excellent in his decisions than Bias of Priene

Priene

Priene was an ancient Greek city of Ionia at the base of an escarpment of Mycale, about north of the then course of the Maeander River, from today's Aydin, from today's Söke and from ancient Miletus...

." (Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is known about his life, but his surviving Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is one of the principal surviving sources for the history of Greek philosophy.-Life:Nothing is definitively known about his life...

, Book I, Chapter: The Life of Bias)

He also wrote about 2,000 verses on Ionia

Ionia

Ionia is an ancient region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey, the region nearest İzmir, which was historically Smyrna. It consisted of the northernmost territories of the Ionian League of Greek settlements...

, to show in what matter a man might achieve happiness.

Death

The legend says that he died as an old man, pleading a cause for his client. After he had finished speaking, he leaned back with his head on the bosom of his daughter's son. When the advocate on the opposite side had spoken, the judges decided in favor of Bias's client. At the end of the trial he was found dead on his grandson's bosom. The city buried him in the greatest magnificence.

Vatican bust

In April, 1819, Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal...

 wrote in his Reisebuch [Travel Diary]: "In the Vatican

Vatican Museums

The Vatican Museums , in Viale Vaticano in Rome, inside the Vatican City, are among the greatest museums in the world, since they display works from the immense collection built up by the Roman Catholic Church throughout the centuries, including some of the most renowned classical sculptures and...

[Hall of Philosophers] there is the bust of Bias with the inscription of πλεἳστοι άνθρωπι κακοι [most men are bad]. Indeed this must have been his maxim."