Revisualizing the Delphic Maxims

Because they were carved in stone & aged like milk.

The Delphic Maxims are 147 short phrases of life advice (contradictory, repetitive, ageist, sexist, violent, paranoid, pithy) that have been interpreted and repeated and followed across millennia.

They’re attributed to the 7 Sages of Greece: Solon of Athens, Chilon of Sparta, Thales of Miletus, Bias of Priene, Cleobulus of Lindos, Pittacus of Lesvos, and Periander of Corinth. Wacky dudes, for sure.

The maxims were carved into the Temple of Apollo at Delphi (Where the Pythia, AKA Lady Oracle, would spout her prophecies, but nobody carved any lady words into stone, like, ever), back when Greece was still a patchwork of city-states and we didn’t know bacteria made us sick.

So it is way past time to rework these very odd little quips. Because advice is never truly timeless, and the beauty of it changes just as the beauty of faces does. Because we live in a far more cooperative, equitable, and inclusive world—or, at least, we’re trying to—than those sages could have ever imagined or hallucinated.

And because those maxims, as they stand, no longer work for our times, or our understanding, or our needs. So I crossed them out and wrote in what rings more true—for a moment, at least.

Below are 1-10 of 147, and I’ll post all of the reworkings into the Substack notes system (which you can get into once you sign up to this newsletter) as I think them through.