Plutarch's Morals
alia etiam adfert xiii. p. 566, F."--_Wyttenbach._
[282] Wyttenbach compares Quintilian, "Institut. Orat."
iii. 6, p. 255: "Nam et Hippocrates clarus arte medicinae
videtur honestissime fecisse, qui quosdam errores suos,
ne posteri errarent, confessus est."
[283] Homer, "Odyssey," vi. 187.
[284] Homer, "Odyssey," xxiv. 402.
[285] Plato, "Republic," ix. p. 571, D.
[286] A somewhat similar story about Stilpo is told in
Athenaeus, x. p. 423, D.
[287] So Haupt and Herscher very ingeniously for [Greek:
hiereusin].
[288] Adopting the suggestion of Wyttenbach as to the
reading. The Dorian measure was grave and severe, the
Lydian soft and effeminate.
[289] See our author, "Apophthegmata Laconica," p. 220
C.
[290] Plato, "Symposium," p. 25, E.
[291] This line is quoted again by our author, "On Moral
Virtue," Sec. vii.
[292] Plato, "Laws," iv. p. 711, E.
[293] See those splendid lines of Lucretius, iv.
1155-1169.
[294] "Res valde celebrata ex Institutione Cyri
Xenophontea, v. 1, 2; vi. 1, 17."--_Wyttenbach._
[295] This line is very like a Fragment in the "Danae"
of Euripides. Dind. (328).
[296] On these see Pausanias, v. 7.
[297] Such as Homer could have brought. Compare Horace,
"Odes," iv. ix. 25-28; and Cicero, "pro Archia," x.
"Magnus ille Alexander--cum in Sigeo ad Achillis tumulum
adstitisset, O fortunate, inquit, adolescens, qui tuae
virtutis Homerum praeconem inveneris."
[298] Contrary to Hesiod's saw, "Works and Days," 361,
362.
[299] So Juvenal, xiv. 138-140.
[300] Like Horace's "Non si male nunc, et olim Sic
erit." "Odes," ii. x. 16, 17.
[301] _Noblesse oblige_ in fact.
[302] Pindar, Frag. 206.
[303] Like Horace's _factus ad unguem_, because the
sculptor tries its polish and the niceness of the joints
by drawing his nail over the surface. Casaub. Pers. i.
64; Horace, "Sat." i. v. 32, 33; A. P. 294; Erasmus,
"Adagia," p. 507.
WHETHER VICE IS SUFFICIENT TO CAUSE
UNHAPPINESS.[304]
Sec. I. ... He who gets a dowry with his wife sells himself for it, as
Euripides says,[305] but his gains are few and uncertain; but he who
does not go all on fire through many a funeral pile, but through a regal
pyre, full of panting and fear and sweat got from travelling over the
sea as a merchant, has the wealth of Tantalus, but cannot enjoy it owing
to his want of leisure. For that Sicyonian horse-breeder was wise, who
gave Agamemnon as a present a swift mare, "that he should not follow him
to wind-swept Ilium, but delight himself at home,"[306] in the quiet
enjoyment of his abundant riches and painless leisure. But nowadays
courtiers, and people who think they have a turn for affairs, thrust
themselves forward of their own accord uninvited into courts and
toilsome escorts and bivouacs, that they may get a horse, or brooch, or
some such piece of good luck. "But his wife is left behind in Phylace,
and tears her cheeks in her sorrow, and his house is only half complete
without him,"[307] while he is dragged about, and wanders about, and
wastes his time in idle hopes, and has to put up with much insult. And
even if he gets any of those things he desires, giddy and dizzy at
Fortune's rope-dance, he seeks retirement, and deems those happy who
live obscure and in security, while they again look up admiringly at him
who soars so high above their heads.[308]
Sec. II. Vice has universally an ill effect on everybody, being in itself a
sufficient producer of infelicity, needing no instruments nor ministers.
For tyrants, anxious to make those whom they punish wretched, keep
executioners and torturers, and contrive branding-irons and other
instruments of torture to inspire fear[309] in the brute soul, whereas
vice attacks the soul without any such apparatus, and crushes and
dejects it, and fills a man with sorrow, and lamentation, and
melancholy, and remorse. Here is a proof of what I say. Many are silent
under mutilation, and endure scourging or torture at the hand of despots
or tyrants without uttering a word, whenever their soul, abating the
pain by reason, forcibly as it were checks and represses them: but you
can never quiet anger or smother grief, or persuade a timid person not
to run away, or one suffering from remorse not to cry out, nor tear his
hair, nor smite his thigh. Thus vice is stronger than fire and sword.
Sec. III. You know of course that cities, when they desire to publicly
contract for the building of temples or colossuses, listen to the
estimates of the contractors who compete for the job, and bring their
plans and charges, and finally select the contractor who will do the
work at least expense, and best, and quickest. Let us suppose then that
we publicly contract to make the life of man miserable, and take the
estimates of Fortune and Vice for this object. Fortune shall come
forward, provided with all sorts of instruments and costly apparatus to
make life miserable and wretched. She shall come with robberies and
wars, and the blood-guiltiness of tyrants, and storms at sea, and
lightning drawn down from the sky, she shall compound hemlock, she shall
bring swords, she shall levy an army of informers, she shall cause
fevers to break out, she shall rattle fetters and build prisons. It is
true that most of these things are owing to Vice rather than Fortune,
but let us suppose them all to come from Fortune. And let Vice stand by
naked, without any external things against man, and let her ask Fortune
how she will make man unhappy and dejected. Fortune, dost thou threaten
poverty? Metrocles laughs at thee, who sleeps during winter among the
sheep, in summer in the vestibules of temples, and challenges the king
of the Persians,[310] who winters at Babylon, and summers in Media, to
vie with him in happiness. Dost thou bring slavery, and bondage, and
sale? Diogenes despises thee, who cried out, as he was being sold by
some robbers, "Who will buy a master?" Dost thou mix a cup of poison?
Didst not thou offer such a one to Socrates? And cheerfully, and mildly,
without fear, without changing colour or countenance, he calmly drank it
up: and when he was dead, all who survived deemed him happy, as sure to
have a divine lot in Hades. And as to thy fire, did not Decius, the
general of the Romans, anticipate it for himself, having piled up a
funeral pyre between the two armies, and sacrificed himself to Cronos,
dedicating himself for the supremacy of his country? And the chaste and
loving wives of the Indians strive and contend with one another for the
fire, and she that wins the day and gets burnt with the body of her
husband, is pronounced happy by the rest, and her praises sung. And of
the wise men in that part of the world no one is esteemed or pronounced
happy, who does not in his lifetime, in good health and in full
possession of all his faculties, separate soul from body by fire, and
emerge pure from flesh, having purged away his mortal part. Or wilt thou
reduce a man from a splendid property, and house, and table, and
sumptuous living, to a threadbare coat and wallet, and begging of daily
bread? Such was the beginning of happiness to Diogenes, of freedom and
glory to Crates. Or wilt thou nail a man on a cross, or impale him on a
stake? What cares Theodorus whether he rots above ground or below? Such
was the happy mode of burial amongst the Scythians,[311] and among the
Hyrcanians dogs, among the Bactrians birds, devour according to the laws
the dead bodies of those who have made a happy end.
Sec. IV. Who then are made unhappy by these things? Those who have no
manliness or reason, the enervated and untrained, who retain the
opinions they had as children. Fortune therefore does not produce
perfect infelicity, unless Vice co-operate. For as a thread saws through
a bone that has been soaked in ashes and vinegar, and as people bend and
fashion ivory only when it has been made soft and supple by beer, and
cannot under any other circumstances, so Fortune, lighting upon what is
in itself faulty and soft through Vice, hollows it out and wounds it.
And as the Parthian juice, though hurtful to no one else nor injurious
to those who touch it or carry it about, yet if it be communicated to a
wounded man straightway kills him through his previous susceptibility to
receive its essence, so he who will be upset in soul by Fortune must
have some secret internal ulcer or sore to make external things so
piteous and lamentable.
Sec. V. Does then Vice need Fortune to bring about infelicity? By no means.
She lashes not up the rough and stormy sea, she girds not lonely
mountain passes with robbers lying in wait by the way, she makes not
clouds of hail to burst on the fruitful plains, she suborns not Meletus
or Anytus or Callixenus as accusers, she takes not away wealth, excludes
not people from the praetorship to make them wretched; but she scares the
rich, the well-to-do, and great heirs; by land and sea she insinuates
herself and sticks to people, infusing lust, inflaming with anger,
afflicting them with superstitious fears, tearing them in pieces with
envy.
[304] The beginning of this short Treatise is lost. Nor
is the first paragraph at all clear. We have to guess
somewhat at the meaning.
[305] In a fragment of the "Phaethon." Compare also "On
Education," Sec. 19.
[306] "Iliad," xxiii. 297, 298.
[307] "Iliad," ii. 700, 701.
[308] 'Tis ever so. Compare Horace, "Sat." i. i. 1-14.
[309] Adopting Reiske's reading.
[310] Proverbial for extreme good fortune. Cf. Horace,
"Odes," iii. ix. 4, "Persarum vigui rege beatior."
[311] See Herodotus, iv. 72.
WHETHER THE DISORDERS OF MIND OR
BODY ARE WORSE.
Sec. I. Homer, looking at the mortality of all living creatures, and
comparing them with one another in their lives and habits, gave vent to
his thoughts in the words,
"Of all the things that on the earth do breathe,
Or creep, man is by far the wretchedest;"[312]
assigning to man an unhappy pre-eminence in extreme misfortune. But let
us, assuming that man is, as thus publicly declared, supreme in
infelicity and the most wretched of all living creatures, compare him
with himself, in the estimate of his misery dividing body and soul, not
idly but in a very necessary way, that we may learn whether our life is
more wretched owing to Fortune or through our own fault. For disease is
engendered in the body by nature, but vice and depravity in the soul is
first its own doing, then its settled condition. And it is no slight aid
to tranquillity of mind if what is bad be capable of cure, and lighter
and less violent.
Sec. II. The fox in AEsop[313] disputing with the leopard as to their
respective claims to variety, the latter showed its body and appearance
all bright and spotted, while the tawny skin of the former was dirty and
not pleasant to look at. Then the fox said, "Look inside me, sir judge,
and you will see that I am more full of variety than my opponent,"
referring to his trickiness and versatility in shifts. Let us similarly
say to ourselves, Many diseases and disorders, good sir, thy body
naturally produces of itself, many also it receives from without; but if
thou lookest at thyself within thou wilt find, to borrow the language of
Democritus, a varied and susceptible storehouse and treasury of what is
bad, not flowing in from without, but having as it were innate and
native springs, which vice, being exceedingly rich and abundant in
passion, produces. And if diseases are detected in the body by the pulse
and by pallors and flushes,[314] and are indicated by heats and sudden