"The one knowing what is profitable, and not the man knowing many things, is wise"
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Aeschylus draws blood with a single distinction: wisdom isn’t a library, it’s a compass. “The man knowing many things” is the flashy intellectual of the agora, stocked with facts, myths, and clever arguments. But Aeschylus, writing tragedy for a city that made public decisions at scale, cares less about mental ornament and more about judgment under pressure. “Knowing what is profitable” doesn’t mean crude greed; it means discerning what actually serves survival, stability, and communal flourishing when the stakes are life, lineage, and polis.
The line carries an almost theatrical suspicion of trivia-as-virtue. Greek culture prized sophia, but it also feared the kind of overreaching intelligence that looks like brilliance and behaves like hubris. In tragedy, the well-informed often become the most doomed because their knowledge outruns their sense of limits. Aeschylus flips the prestige economy: accumulation is not mastery. The wise person is the one who can sort signal from noise and convert insight into action that holds.
There’s also an ethical edge. “Profitable” suggests consequences, not abstractions. In a world of oaths, blood-feuds, and divine law, decisions echo across generations; practicality becomes moral. The subtext is a warning to leaders and citizens alike: don’t mistake cleverness for fitness to rule, or information for the capacity to choose. Wisdom, here, is measured by outcomes and restraint, not by how crowded your mind is.
The line carries an almost theatrical suspicion of trivia-as-virtue. Greek culture prized sophia, but it also feared the kind of overreaching intelligence that looks like brilliance and behaves like hubris. In tragedy, the well-informed often become the most doomed because their knowledge outruns their sense of limits. Aeschylus flips the prestige economy: accumulation is not mastery. The wise person is the one who can sort signal from noise and convert insight into action that holds.
There’s also an ethical edge. “Profitable” suggests consequences, not abstractions. In a world of oaths, blood-feuds, and divine law, decisions echo across generations; practicality becomes moral. The subtext is a warning to leaders and citizens alike: don’t mistake cleverness for fitness to rule, or information for the capacity to choose. Wisdom, here, is measured by outcomes and restraint, not by how crowded your mind is.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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