"The Astrologer who Fell into a Well" is a fable based on a Greek

anecdote An anecdote is "a story with a point", such as to communicate an abstract idea about a person, place, or thing through the concrete details of a short narrative or to characterize by delineating a specific quirk or trait. Anecdotes may be real ...

concerning the

pre-Socratic Pre-Socratic philosophy, also known as early Greek philosophy, is ancient Greek philosophy before Socrates. Pre-Socratic philosophers were mostly interested in cosmology, the beginning and the substance of the universe, but the inquiries of the ...

philosopher

Thales of Miletus Thales of Miletus ( ; ; ) was an Ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher from Miletus in Ionia, Asia Minor. Thales was one of the Seven Sages, founding figures of Ancient Greece. Beginning in eighteenth-century historiography, many came to ...

. It was one of several ancient jokes that were absorbed into

Aesop's Fables Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a Slavery in ancient Greece, slave and storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 Before the Common Era, BCE. Of varied and unclear origins, the stor ...

and is now numbered 40 in the

Perry Index The Perry Index is a widely used index of "Aesop's Fables" or "Aesopica", the fables credited to Aesop, the storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC. The index was created by Ben Edwin Perry, a professor of classics at the U ...

. During the scientific attack on

astrology Astrology is a range of Divination, divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that propose that information about human affairs and terrestrial events may be discerned by studying the apparent positions ...

in the 16th–17th centuries, the story again became very popular.

The fable and its interpretation

The story of Thales falling into a well while gazing at the stars was originally recorded in

Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...

's '' Theaetetus'' (4th century BCE). Other ancient tellings sometimes vary the person or the rescuer but regularly retain the rescuer's scoffing remark that it would be better to keep one's mind on the earth. The Roman poet

Ennius Quintus Ennius (; ) was a writer and poet who lived during the Roman Republic. He is often considered the father of Roman poetry. He was born in the small town of Rudiae, located near modern Lecce (ancient ''Calabria'', today Salento), a town ...

summed up the lesson to be learned from the story in the line ("No one regards what is before his feet when searching out the regions of the sky") and was twice quoted by

Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, orator, writer and Academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises tha ...

to this effect.

Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas ( ; ; – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican Order, Dominican friar and Catholic priest, priest, the foremost Scholasticism, Scholastic thinker, as well as one of the most influential philosophers and theologians in the W ...

(d. 1274) reports the story as follows in his commentary on the

Nicomachean Ethics The ''Nicomachean Ethics'' (; , ) is Aristotle's best-known work on ethics: the science of the good for human life, that which is the goal or end at which all our actions aim. () It consists of ten sections, referred to as books, and is closely ...

''When Thales was leaving his house to look at the stars he fell into a ditch; while he was bewailing the fact an old woman remarked to him: "You, O Thales, cannot see what is at your feet and you expect to see what is in the heavens?"''

The anecdote was repeated as an amusing story in the English jest book '' Merry Tales and Quick Answers'' (1530). In this the philosopher Meanwhile,

Andrea Alciato Andrea Alciato (8 May 149212 January 1550), commonly known as Alciati (Andreas Alciatus), was an Italian jurist and writer. He is regarded as the founder of the French school of legal humanists. Biography Alciati was born in Alzate Brianza, n ...

was mounting a more serious attack on astrology in his '' Book of Emblems'', the first of many editions of which appeared in 1531. In that first edition there was an illustration of the astrologer, head in air, about to trip over a block on the ground. The accompanying Latin poem referred to the story of

Icarus In Greek mythology, Icarus (; , ) was the son of the master craftsman Daedalus, the architect of the labyrinth of Crete. After Theseus, king of Athens and enemy of King Minos, escaped from the labyrinth, Minos suspected that Icarus and Daedalu ...

and later editions used instead an illustration of his fall from the sky. However, the emblem is titled "Against Astrologers" and the poem concludes with the warning 'Let the astrologer beware of predicting anything. For the imposter will fall headlong, so long as he flies above the stars.' The English emblem compiler Geoffrey Whitney followed Alciato's lead in including the story and an equally fierce attack in his ''Choice of Emblemes'' (1586). At much the same time,

John Lyly John Lyly (; also spelled ''Lilly'', ''Lylie'', ''Lylly''; born c. 1553/54 – buried 30 November 1606)Hunter, G. K. (2004)"Lyly, John (1554–1606)". ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 23 January 2 ...

's play,

Gallathea ''Gallathea'' or ''Galatea'' is an English literature#Elizabethan era, Elizabethan era stage play, a comedy by John Lyly. The first record of the play's performance was at Palace of Placentia, Greenwich Palace on New Year's Day, 1588 where it w ...

(first performed in 1588) features a sub-plot involving a phony alchemist and a sham astronomer who, in gazing up at the stars, falls backward into a pond. The

Neo-Latin Neo-LatinSidwell, Keith ''Classical Latin-Medieval Latin-Neo Latin'' in ; others, throughout. (also known as New Latin and Modern Latin) is the style of written Latin used in original literary, scholarly, and scientific works, first in Italy d ...

poet Gabriele Faerno also included the story of the stumbling astrologer in his collection ''Centum Fabulae'' (1554), but concluded with the more philosophical point, 'How can you understand the world without knowing yourself first?' As with several others, it was from this source that

Jean de la Fontaine Jean de La Fontaine (, ; ; 8 July 162113 April 1695) was a French Fable, fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his ''La Fontaine's Fables, Fables'', which provided a model for subs ...

included the plot among his ''Fables'' (II.13). His poem is remarkable in confining the story to a mere four-line allusion before launching into a 45-line denunciation of astrology (with a side-swipe at alchemy too). But the battle against superstition had been won by the time that Charles Denis included a mere digest of La Fontaine's poem in his ''Select Fables'' (1754). His conclusion is that speculation about the future is idle; how many folk, he asks,

Samuel Croxall Samuel Croxall (c. 1688/9 – 1752) was an Anglican churchman, writer and translator, particularly noted for his edition of Aesop's Fables. Early career Samuel Croxall was born in 1688 or 1689 at Walton on Thames, where his father (also called Sa ...

is even more curt in his ''Fables of Aesop'' (1732). The moral of the tale, he concludes, is "mind your own business".

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Astrologer who Fell into a Well 4th-century BC literature Aesop's Fables La Fontaine's Fables Emblem books Fiction about well-related accidents Anecdotes Fiction about astrology Works by Plato