Why We Do Not Speak Ill of the Dead

Quiet Canines Podcast · Jul 13, 2026 · 2m

Senator Lindsey Graham has died at 71.

Have you ever wondered why we have a custom of not saying bad things about the dead? The rule can be traced back to Chilon of Sparta, a statesman who lived around 600 BCE. Ancient Greeks remembered him as one of the Seven Sages, thinkers celebrated for brief lessons about restraint, judgement, and conduct.

About nine centuries later, the Greek biographer Diogenes Laërtius preserved sayings attributed to Chilon in a work called Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. Among them was the instruction, “Do not speak evil of the dead.” The saying began in Greek…