This Πίναξ is a philosophical explanation of a table on which the whole of human life with its dangers and temptations was symbolically represented, and which is said to have been dedicated by some one in the temple of Cronos at Athens or Thebes. The author introduces some youths contemplating the table, and an old man who steps among them undertakes to explain its meaning. The whole drift of the little book is to shew, that only the proper development of our mind and the possession of real virtues can make us truly happy. Suidas calls this πίναξ a διήγησις τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου, an explanation which is not applicable to the work now extant, and some have therefore thought, that the πίναξ to which Suidas refers was a different work from the one we possess. This and other circumstances have led some critics to doubt whether our πίναξ is the work of the Theban Cebes, and to ascribe it to a later Cebes of Cyzicus, a Stoic philosopher of the time of Marcus Aurelius. (Athen. 4.156.) But the πίναξ which is now extant is manifestly written in a Socratic spirit and on Socratic principles, so that at any rate its author is much more likely to have been a Socratic than a Stoic philosopher. There are, it is true, some few passages (e. g. 100.13) where persons are mentioned belonging to a later age than that of the Theban Cebes, but there is little doubt but that this and a few similar passages are interpolations by a later hand, which cannot surprise us in the case of a work of such popularity as the πίναξ of Cebes. For, owing to its ethical character, it was formerly extremely popular, and the editions and translations of it are very numerous.