On Oct 7, 2011, at 12:27 AM, Manfred Kropp wrote:
> 
> The "bonum" is a miscitation (cf. the not trustworthy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_mortuis_nil_nisi_bonum)
> or deliberate alteration of
> "de mortuis nil nisi bene".
> Deliberate?: yes, because it changes the imperative from "being just and fair" in "to be a panegyric" (perhaps more fashionable and accepted in our times).
> msk

Well as the translation is from the Renaissance, at least according to Wikipedia and not from Classical times almost anything is possible. Also, although this certainly doesn't prove much one way or the other, a Google search on both phrases has bonum outnumbering bene by a good margin. 

While there is nothing written (and may never have been) from Chiron himself we DO have the source in a way in "Lives of the Emminent Philosophers" by Diogenes and I guess someone more mobile than I could hie themselves to the Library and look in the Loeb Library translation because what passes (after some 2500 years who knows for sure) for the original Greek is there in his discussion of Chiron. Not to mention searching Google books. I leave this to someone whose Greek is bound to be better than mine. 

rich
-- 
Rich Hansen
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