About Cebes

Cebes lets you question the people who shaped how we think — an emperor writing to himself on campaign, a naturalist counting earthworms, a founder, a revolutionary of non-violence — and hear them answer from their own writing.

Why

Most of what we know about great minds reaches us second-hand: summaries, quotations stripped of context, other people’s opinions of them. Their own writing is still there, but it runs to thousands of pages, much of it letters and diaries few people ever read. Cebes puts that writing in conversation with you. You can ask what you actually want to know, press on an answer, and check every claim against the passage it came from.

Their own words

Each figure has a library built from what they actually wrote: books, letters, diaries, speeches, recorded conversations. Together the libraries hold more than 27,000 passages.

• Marcus Aurelius — the Meditations and his letters to his teacher Fronto, alongside the ancient histories of his reign.
• Benjamin Franklin — the Autobiography, Poor Richard’s Almanack, and his essays, papers and letters.
• Charles Darwin — On the Origin of Species, The Descent of Man, the Voyage of the Beagle and its diary, his Autobiography, and his letters to Asa Gray.
• Napoleon Bonaparte — his conversations on St Helena as recorded by Las Cases, his letters to Josephine, and his maxims of war.
• Friedrich Nietzsche — every book he published, his notebooks, lectures and poems, and hundreds of his letters and diary pages.
• Mahatma Gandhi — his Autobiography, Hind Swaraj, and his writing in Young India.

Every source is in the public domain. Where a figure wrote in another language, we use public-domain translations, chosen for how faithfully and how readably they carry the original.

How an answer is made

• Reading the question in their terms. A modern question rarely uses the words a nineteenth-century letter does, so it is first restated in the figure’s own vocabulary — names, places and ideas they would recognise.
• Searching the library. The most relevant passages, usually six, are drawn from their writing.
• Answering from the passages. The figure answers in their own voice, but any specific claim — a fact, a view, an event — has to come from those passages, and carries a citation.
• Showing the source. Open any citation to see the passage itself, the work it comes from, and where in that work it sits.

A fixed moment in their life

Each figure speaks from one point in time and knows nothing after it. Ask about something that happened later and they will tell you they cannot know it, rather than guess.

• Marcus Aurelius — 180 AD, on the Danube frontier, in the last year of his life.
• Benjamin Franklin — 1789, as the new federal government takes shape.
• Charles Darwin — 1881, at Down House, among his earthworms.
• Napoleon Bonaparte — 1817, in exile on St Helena.
• Friedrich Nietzsche — autumn 1888, in Turin, finishing Ecce Homo.
• Mahatma Gandhi — 1929, at Sabarmati, his autobiography just complete.

What they will not do

• Invent memories, meetings or quotations their writing does not support.
• Claim knowledge of events after their moment.
• Soften what they actually believed to make it comfortable — including views we, and they in later life, might reject.
• Perform: no stage directions, no theatrical flourishes their writing does not have.

Testing and review

Before a figure goes live, and when we change one, we put it through a set of hard questions: its most controversial views, events after its time, questions built on false premises, and follow-ups that press on a contradiction. We read every answer for accuracy, grounding and voice.

Scholars of the figures review them and tell us where they go wrong. You can read about them on our scholars page.

What it is not

The answers are written by an AI language model. They are interpretations grounded in the record, not the people themselves, and they can be wrong. Read the AI disclaimer before relying on anything said in a conversation.

The name

Cebes was a young Theban who sat with Socrates on the last day of his life, and whose objections drive Plato’s Phaedo. He did not take answers on trust; he pushed back until the argument held. That is the kind of conversation we want this to be.

Contact

Scholars, educators and press: we would like to hear from you at olileotardif@gmail.com.

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