Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 2 (of 5)

By Plutarch

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Title: Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 2 (of 5)

Author: Plutarch

Editor: William Watson Goodwin

Release date: March 8, 2026 [eBook #78147]

Language: English

Original publication: Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1898

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PLUTARCH'S ESSAYS AND MISCELLANIES, VOL. 2 (OF 5) ***

Transcriber’s notes:

Italic text is marked _thus_.
Spaced gesperrt text is marked ~thus~.

The spelling, hyphenation, punctuation and accentuation are as the
original, except for apparent typographical errors which have been
corrected.

[Illustration: _Venus weeping over the body of Adonis._

_From the painting by Emanuel Benner._]

PLUTARCH’S ESSAYS AND MISCELLANIES

Comprising all his Works Collected
under the Title of “Morals” · Translated
from the Greek by Several Hands
Corrected and Revised by WILLIAM
W. GOODWIN, Ph.D., Professor of
Greek Literature in Harvard University
In Five Volumes · Volume Two

[Illustration: HONOS ET VIRTVS]

BOSTON · LITTLE, BROWN
AND COMPANY · MCMXI

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870,
By Little, Brown, and Company,
In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.

Printers
S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, U. S. A.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME SECOND.

WITH THE TRANSLATORS’ NAMES.

THE BANQUET OF THE SEVEN WISE MEN.

By Roger Davis, A.M.

Periander prepares the banquet, 4. A question proposed to Bias of
Priene, 4. Thales ascertained the height of one of the pyramids, and
how, 5. Need of preparation for an entertainment, 6. Conversation by
the way, 6, 7. Arrival of the company, 7. Anacharsis the Scythian;
Eumetis, 8. The seat assigned to a person a frivolous consideration,
9. A prodigy: a child born of a mare, 10. The explanation, 11. Esop
relates the fable of the Lydian mule, 11. The frugality of Periander,
12. Anacharsis is questioned respecting the Scythians, 12. A letter
is read from Amasis, king of Egypt, proposing a question, 13. Bias
suggests an answer to the question, 14. The seven wise men, in turn,
reply to the question how a people should be governed, 15. The
discussion continued, 16, 17. Answers to other questions, 17, 18.
Riddles and their solutions, 19, 20. How should a state be governed?
20. How to govern a house, 21, 22. Talk about drinking wine, 23.
The end is worth more than the means, 24. The end of drinking is to
nourish and increase friendship, 24. What measure of outward good
should be regarded as sufficient, 26. A spare diet, as recommended
by Hesiod, 27. Extremes to be avoided, 28. Enjoy freely what we
have, but with moderation, 29. A necessity for eating and drinking,
31. But fatal distempers often ensue, 32. The story of Arion and
the dolphins, 33-36. The story of Hesiod and the dolphins, 36, 37.
Another story about dolphins, 38. The creatures obey the impulse of
God, 39. Μηδὲν ἄγαν, “Do not overdo,” 40,
41.

HOW A YOUNG MAN OUGHT TO HEAR POEMS.

By Simon Ford, D.D.

Young people are fond of fiction, 42. The danger hence arising,
42, 43. We would not interdict to them the reading of poetry, 44.
But give them wholesome advice touching the matter, 45. Poets deal
much in fiction: it belongs to the very essence of poetry, 46. This
contributes greatly to the entertainment of the reader, 46. Evident
absurdities must be rejected, 47. Do not receive as literal truth
what the poets say of the gods or of the departed, 48. Poetry is
an imitative art: the exactness of the imitation, even of a foul
action, gives pleasure, 50. If odious and abominable conduct is
to be represented in poetry, the expression must correspond, 51.
But the poets, especially Homer, signify their disapproval of such
conduct, 52, 53. They often introduce evil examples to promote
moral improvement, 55. The contradictions among poets lessen the
credit of what they say, and thus diminish the possible danger, 55.
The poets often furnish antidotes to the poison they deal out, 57,
58. We may also quote the philosophers against the poets, 59. In
using the names of the gods, the poets often mean only the powers
of nature, or fortune, or some second cause, 61, 62. They often use
words tropically, and then are not to be taken in the literal sense,
64, 65. Poetry requires variety, hence it never represents the same
persons, not even the gods, as uniformly virtuous or prosperous, 66,
67. Therefore the young man must not approve or admire every thing
which is said of the heroes of poetry, 68. Instance, Achilles and
Agamemnon, 69. Several passages in Homer criticised, 69-72. Criticism
on Sophocles, 72. More criticisms and explanations of the Iliad,
74-84, 89, 90. Young men may be taught good morals, and how they
differ from bad, by the poets, _ib._ Boys may learn something
useful even from passages wicked and absurd, 83. We may show young
persons how passages in the poets, of good tendency, are confirmed by
the language of philosophers, 91. Plato and the poets sometimes speak
alike, 92. Thus may poetry and philosophy be reconciled, 93, 94.

OF ENVY AND HATRED

By Mr. P. Lancaster, of Baliol College in Oxford

Envy and Hatred are alike opposed to Benevolence, 95. Yet they are
distinct passions, 95. Their points of difference, 95, _et seq._
Hatred regards the hated person as evil; envy regards only the
felicity of others, 95. Hatred may be directed against brutes; envy
is directed only against man, 96. Brutes may hate but never envy
brutes, 96. Envy is always unjust; hatred is often just, 96. Hatred
increases as the object grows worse; envy rises higher as the object
increases in virtue, 97. Envy often ceases when the object has risen
to supreme power; hatred never ceases, 98.

HOW TO KNOW A FLATTERER FROM A FRIEND

By Mr. Tullie, of Queen’s College

Self-love and self-admiration expose a man to the attempts of
flatterers, 100. Mean, poor, and worthless people are not flattered,
but those of a generous and noble nature, 101. In the choice of
friends, let us be wary, yet not over scrupulous, 102. A parasite
who is cringing and obsequious is not difficult of detection, 103.
The great danger is from those who personate the true friend, yet
are selfish and insincere, 104. True friendship arises from a
conformity of tempers and dispositions, 105. The flatterer attempts
such a conformity, 106. It is not natural and uniform, but a mere
disguise, 107. The flatterer is mutable and inconstant, 109. He only
reflects the humors of other men, 109. The true friend imitates
and commends only what is worthy, 110. The flatterer copies the
faults and blemishes of friends, 110, 111. He pretends to have the
same diseases, 111. And to suffer the same ill-treatment, 112.
Counterfeiting the good qualities of a friend, he yields him the
pre-eminence, 112. The flatterer often overdoes, in the effort to
make himself agreeable, 114. The true friend is sometimes under the
necessity of giving pain, 115. The flatterer deals out undeserved
encomium, against which our own conscience protests, 116. Sometimes
he utters praise as if he heard it from a third person, 119.
Sometimes he flatters men in their vices by deriding the contrary
virtues, 119, 120. There is a silent flattery, as when a man yields
his place to another, 121. The parasite praises the man of money,
122. His censures, if he deliver any, fall upon venial faults, not
on real crimes, 124. He flatters, even while pretending to blame,
125. Men, are flattered when reproved for faults directly the
reverse of their real ones, 126. The friend aims at the improvement
of our character; the flatterer works on our weak spots, 128, 129.
The friend is open-hearted and natural; the flatterer ceremonious
and obsequious, 130. The real friend will assist in no dishonest
endeavor: the flatterer has no scruples about the proposal, 131,
132, 134, 135. The kindness of a friend is without parade; that of
a flatterer is attended with bustle and show, 133. The flatterer
reminds us of his past services; the true friend never, 134. An
accurate self-knowledge defends against flattery, 137, 138. We
have no need of flattery, 138. Causeless censure may be equally
mischievous with causeless praise, 138. How to avoid causeless
reprehension of others, 139, et seq. Eliminate from the affair
all self-interest, 140. Free our speech from reproachful words,
141. Deliver ourselves with seriousness and dignity, 142. Make our
reproofs seasonable, 143. The prosperous need reproof rather than the
afflicted, 144. When is severe reproof allowable? 145. Reprove not
in presence of another, 148; especially not before inferiors, 149. A
reprover should not himself need reproof, 150. In reproving, confess
our own fault, 150. Mix with the reproof a little praise, 151. If
reproved, do not retort on your monitor, 152. Reprove only on weighty
occasions, 152. Avoid a fault-finding, captious habit, 153. Reproof
is not offensive, when kindly administered, 154. Reprove with caution
and moderation, 155. Care should be used to leave with the reproof a
salutary impression, 156.

THAT IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO LIVE PLEASURABLY ACCORDING TO THE DOCTRINE
OF EPICURUS.

By William Baxter, Gent.

Four interlocutors discourse respecting this doctrine, 157-203. What
had been said by a favorer of Epicurus, 157, 158. What the Epicurean
doctrine is, 159. It recognizes no pleasure but that which is derived
from the senses, 160. Objections to this doctrine, 160, _et
seq._ Pains, as well as pleasures, enter through the senses, and
these are keenly felt, 161. Bodily pleasure is feeble and soon over,
161. The remembrance of past pleasure only stimulates desire for
more, 163; and this produces a restless habit, 164. No man can safely
count on a continuance of what he now enjoys, 165. Hence there must
be constant disquiet, 166. A wicked course contributes nothing to
assurance of continual enjoyment, 166. Our very bodily constitution
places us in constant peril, 167. To escape evil, the Epicureans
say, is the supreme good; but this is simply impossible, 167. If it
were possible, it would not raise us above the brutes, 168, 169.
Freedom from bodily pain is a trivial affair, 169. The Epicurean
philosophy rejects the idea of God and of future retribution; this
costs effort; the brutes who never had this idea have advantage over
the followers of Epicurus, 170. Intellectual enjoyments greatly
superior to sensual pleasures, 171. There is great enjoyment in
knowledge, 171. An acquaintance with works of genius affords great
pleasure, 172. The mathematics afford unspeakable delight, 173.
Instances of this in the cases of Eudoxus, Pythagoras, Archimedes,
and others, 174. Such pleasures are far superior and more intense
than sensual enjoyments, 174. The Epicurean philosophy eschews these
higher and purer delights, 175; and in old age it has nothing left,
176. Epicurus disallows music, 177, 178. He would deprive the mind
of its own proper good, and drag it down to the level of the body,
179. The highest good consists in action, 180; especially beneficent
action, 180, 181. The pleasures recognized by Epicureans are base
and ignoble, 182. They make the stomach the centre, 183. A noble
nature despises such pleasures, 184, 185. Great and generous actions
are never forgotten, 186; but the memory of sensual gratification
is transient, 186. A good reputation affords high satisfaction,
187. This cannot be enjoyed by idle and debauched persons, 188. The
Epicureans leave us no hope from God, 189. The fear and worship of
God, even when joined with superstition, keep down wickedness and
afford much pleasure, 190. This pleasure is shared alike by rich and
poor, 191; but Epicureans deny it to themselves, 191. The Deity can
neither do nor suffer wrong, 192. Therefore a friend of God must
be happy, 193. Of such a satisfaction the followers of Epicurus
would deprive us, 194. According to them, death is the extinction
of our being,—a gloomy prospect, 195. All men shrink at the idea
of annihilation, 197. A dark hereafter is better than none, 198.
Epicureanism extinguishes hope and virtue, 199. The hope of another
and better life gives additional comfort to the present, 200. Of all
this hope and enjoyment the Epicurean doctrine deprives us, and thus
debases and contracts our nature, 202, 203.

ROMAN QUESTIONS.

By Isaac Chauncy, of the College of Physicians, London.

1. Why do the Romans require a new-married woman to touch fire and
water? 204. 2. Why do they light, at nuptials, five torches? 204. 3,
4. Questions about Diana’s temples, 205. 5. Why do persons falsely
reported as dead, on their return home from foreign parts, not enter
by the door? 206. 6. Why do women kiss their relations? 207. 7.
Why are husbands and wives forbidden to receive presents from each
other? 208. 8. Why may they not receive a gift from a son-in-law or
father-in-law? 209. 9. Why do husbands returning from remote parts
send to acquaint their wives of their approach? 209. 10. Why do
men in divine service cover their heads, &c.? 209. 11. Why do they
sacrifice to Saturn with head uncovered? 210. 12. Why do they esteem
Saturn the father of truth? 211. 13. Why do they sacrifice to Honor
bareheaded? 211. 14. Why do sons appear at their parents’ funerals
with covered heads, &c.? 211. 15. Why do Romans not sacrifice to the
god Terminus? 212. 16. Why must not maid-servants enter the temple of
Matuta? 212. 17. Why do not women supplicate this goddess in behalf
of their children? 213. 18. Why do the rich pay tithes to Hercules?
213. 19. Why does the Roman year begin in January? 213. 20. Why is
not myrtle brought into the temple of Bona Dea? 214. 21. Why is
worship paid to the woodpecker? 215. 22. Why is Janus described as
double-faced? 215. 23. Why are funeral things sold in the temple of
Venus Libitina? 216. 24. Explain the Kalends, Nones, and Ides, 216.
25. Why are the days after the Kalends, Nones, and Ides, considered
unlucky? 217. 26. Why is white sometimes worn as a sign of mourning?
219. 27. Why are walls reputed sacred but not the gates? 219. 28.
Why are children forbidden to swear by Hercules within doors? 220.
29. Why must not the new-married woman step over the threshold but
be carried? 221. 30. Why is she to say, “Where thou art Caius, I am
Caia”? 221. 31. Why is the name Thalassius sung at nuptials? 221.
32. Why are effigies of men, in some cases, called Argives? 222.
33. Why did not men in ancient times sup abroad without their sons?
222. 34. Why were funeral rites performed in December instead of
February? 223. 35. Why is worship paid to the harlot Laurentia? 223.
36. Why is one gate at Rome known as the Window? 224. 37. Why are
spoils taken in war allowed to decay? 225. 38. Why was divination
prohibited after the month of August? 225. 39. Why is it unlawful
for a man not yet mustered into the army to slay an enemy? 226. 40.
Why was it unlawful to anoint a priest of Jupiter in the open air?
226. 41. Why on the ancient coin was Janus stamped, with a ship on
the reverse? 228. 42. Why is the temple of Saturn used as the public
treasury? 228. 43. Why must ambassadors go to Saturn’s temple, and
be there registered? 229. 44. Why must not priests of Jupiter swear?
229. 45. Why at the feast of Venus is wine so freely used? 230. 46.
Why would the ancients have the temple of Horta to stand always open?
230. 47. Why did Romulus build the temple of Vulcan without the city?
231. 48. Why were garlands used in the Consualia? 231. 49. Why did
candidates for office appear without tunics? 232. 50. Why did the
priest of Jupiter, on the death of his wife, resign his office? 232.
51. Why is a dog set before the Lares, and why are the Lares covered
with dogs’ skins? 233. 52. Why is a dog sacrificed to Geneta, &c.?
233. 53. Why, at the Capitoline games, are Sardians offered for
sale by a crier? 234. 54. Why is the flesh-market called Macellum?
234. 55. Why do the minstrels wear women’s apparel on the Ides of
January? 234. 56. Why is it supposed that matrons built the temple
of Carmenta? 235. 57. Why is milk plentifully used in the women’s
sacrifice to Rumina? 236. 58. Why are some senators called Patres,
and others Patres Conscripti? 236. 59. Why was one altar common to
Hercules and the Muses? 236. 60. Why, of the two altars of Hercules,
do the women not partake of the greater? 237. 61. Why is the name
of the tutelary god of Rome not allowed to be mentioned? 237. 62.
Why of the Feciales was the Pater Patratus accounted the chief? 238.
63. Why is the Rex Sacrorum forbidden to bear civil office? 238. 64.
Why after eating must something always be left on the table? 239.
65. The first congress with a wife, why must it be in the dark? 239.
66. Why was a horse-race round called Flaminia? 239. 67. Whence the
name _lictors_? 239. 68. Why do the Luperci sacrifice a dog?
240. 69. Why upon the Septimontium are chariots not drawn by a pair
of horses? 240. 70. Why are convicted thieves called Furciferi? 241.
71. Why is hay bound to the horns of unruly oxen? 241. 72. Why must
the lanterns of soothsayers be open at the top? 242. 73. Why were
priests, afflicted with sores, forbidden to use divination? 242. 74.
Why did Servius Tullius build a temple of Small Fortune? 243. 75.
Why did the Romans not extinguish a candle? 243. 76. Why were little
moons worn on the shoes? 244. 77. Why was the year Jupiter’s, but
the month Juno’s? 244. 78. Why in soothsaying is _sinister_
fortunate? 245. 79. Why might the bones of one who had triumphed be
brought into the city? 246. 80. Why were the consuls requested not to
come to the supper of the triumpher? 246. 81. Why did not the tribune
wear purple? 246. 82. Why, before the chief officers, were the axes
carried bound up in rods? 247. 83. Why did the Romans forbid a human
sacrifice to barbarians, and offer one themselves? 248. 84. Why does
the Roman day begin at midnight? 249. 85. Why of old were women not
suffered to grind or to cook? 250. 86. Why are there no marriages in
May? 250. 87. Why is the hair of a bride parted with a spear? 251.
88. Why is the money for public plays called _lucar_? 251. 89.
Why is the Quirinalia called the Feast of Fools? 251. 90. Why, at
a sacrifice to Hercules, was no other god mentioned, &c.? 252. 91.
Why might not patricians dwell about the Capitol? 252. 92. Why is
a garland of oak-leaves put on him who saves a citizen in battle?
252. 93. Why are vultures used in soothsaying? 253. 94. Why is the
temple of Aesculapius placed without the city? 254. 95. Why must
chaste people abstain from pulse? 254. 96. Why are Vestal Virgins,
when unchaste, buried alive? 254. 97. Why, at a horse-race, is the
winning horse sacrificed to Mars, &c.? 255. 98. Why do the censors
begin their official work by feeding the sacred geese? 255. 99. Why
are augurs never deprived of office? 256. 100. Why, at the Ides of
August, do the servants feast and the free-women wait on them? 257.
101. Why are boys decorated with the necklace called _bulla_?
257. 102. Why do boys receive names at nine days old, and girls at
eight? 258. 103. Why are those whose fathers are not known called
_Spurius_? 258. 104. Why was Bacchus called Liber Pater? 259.
105. Why are widows married on holidays, but not virgins? 259. 106.
Why do the Romans worship Fortuna Primigenia? 260. 107. Whence the
term _histriones_? 260. 108. Why are marriages between persons
near akin not practised? 260. 109. Why must not the chief priest of
Jupiter touch meal or leaven? 261. 110. Why is he forbidden to touch
raw flesh? 261. 111. Why is he forbidden to touch or name dog or
goat? 262. 112. Why is he forbidden to touch ivy, or to pass under
vine branches? 263. 113. Why is he forbidden to bear civil office?
264.

GREEK QUESTIONS.

By the Same Hand.

1. Who are they at Epidaurus called Κονίποδες and Ἄρτυνοι? 265. 2.
What woman did the Cumans call Onobatis? 265. 3. Who is the
Ὑπεκκαύστρια among the Solenses? 266. 4. Who
are the Ἀμνήμονες among the Cnidians, and who is the Ἀφεστήρ? 266.
5. Who were the Χρηστοί among the Arcadians and Lacedaemonians?
266. 6. Who is Κριθολόγος among the Opuntians? 266. 7. What sort of
clouds are the Ploiades? 266. 8. Who is called Platychaetas among the
Boeotians? 267. 9. Who at Delphi is called Ὁσιωτήρ? 267. 10. What is
Phyxemelum? 268. 11. Who are the Ἀποσφενδόνητοι? 268. 12. What was
Charila among the Delphians? 268. 13. What is the beggars’ meat among
the Aenianes? 270. 14. Who were the Coliads among the Ithacans? what
was a φάγιλος? 271. 15. What is the wooden dog among the Locrians?
271. 16. What thing do the Megarians call ἀφάβρωμα? 272. 17. Who was
called δορύξενος? 272. 18. What is παλιντοκία? 273. 19. What is the
Anthedon of which Pythia speaks? 273. 20. What is meant at Priene by
darkness at the Oak? 274. 21. Who in Crete were called Κατακαῦται?
274. 22. What was the Sepulchre of the Boys at Chalcedon? 275. 23.
Who at Argos are Μιξαρχαγέτας and Ἐλάσιοι? 276. 24. What at Argos
is ἔγκνισμα? 276. 25. Who are Ἀλάστωρ, Ἀλιτήριος, and Παλαμναῖος?
276. 26. What is the meaning of a verse sung by certain virgins of
Aenos? 276. 27. Why at Rhodes does the crier never enter the chapel
of Ocridion? 277. 28. Why at Tenedos does no piper enter the temple,
nor must Achilles be named there? 277. 29. Who was the πωλήτης at
Epidamnus? 278. 30. What is the shore of Araenus, in Thrace? 278.
31. Why at the feast of Ceres do the women of Eretria roast meat by
the sun? 279. 32. Who at Miletus were the Ἀειναῦται? 279. 33. Why
do the Chalcidians call a certain place Ἀκμαίων Λέσχη? 279. 34. Who
was he that sacrificed an ox to his benefactor? 280. 35. Why did the
Bottiaean maids sing, “Let us go to Athens”? 280. 36. Why do the
Eleian women in their hymns say, “O Bacchus, come with an ox foot”?
281. 37. Why is a place at Tanagra called Achilleum? 281. 38. Who
among the Boeotians were the Ψολόεις, and the Ὀλεῖαι? 282. 39. Why
do the Arcadians stone those who go willingly into the Lycaeum, &c.?
282. 40. Who is Eunostus, the hero of Tanagra, and why may not women
enter his grove? 283. 41. How came there to be a river in Boeotia
called Scamander? 284. 42. Whence the saying, “Let this prevail”?
285. 43. Why is the city of the Ithacans called Alalcomenae? 285.
44. Who are the Monophagi in Aegina? 286. 45. Why does a statue of
Jupiter in Caria carry an axe and not a thunderbolt? 286. 46. Why
do the Trallians call the pulse ὄροβος καθαρτής? 287. 47. Why do
the Eleans say, “worse than Sambicus”? 287. 48. Why is the temple
of Ulysses at Lacedaemon near the monument of Leucippides? 287. 49.
Why do the women of Chalcedon, on meeting other women’s husbands,
cover one cheek? 288. 50. Why do the Argives bring their sheep to the
grove of Agenor, &c.? 289. 51. Why did the Argive boys in sport call
themselves Ballacrades? 289. 52. Why do the men of Elis lead their
mares out of their borders, &c.? 289. 53. Why was it a custom amongst
the Gnossians that they who borrowed money upon usury should snatch
it up and run away? 289. 54. Why in Samos do they call upon Venus of
Dexicreon? 289. 55. Why in Samos, when they sacrifice to Mercury, do
they allow stealing? 290. 56. Why in Samos is there a place called
Πάναιμα? 290. 57. Why in Samos was the Andron called Pedetes? 290.
58. Why is the priest of Hercules in Cos clothed in women’s apparel?
291. 59. Whence the race of Hamaxocylists in Megara? 292.

OF THE LOVE OF WEALTH.

By Mr. Patrick, of the Charterhouse.

True happiness is not to be bought and sold; wealth will not procure
it, 294. The love of money does not cease on the acquisition of
money, 295. A man who has much is intent on getting more, 296. He
does not need more, but to be relieved of some part of what he has,
296. To possess money, and not to use it, is a distemper of the
mind, 297. The love of wealth is never satisfied, 298. It makes of a
man a miserable slave, 299. Such men are always in want, 297, _et
seq._ They excite aversion in the beholders, 299. They lay up
wealth for their children, 300; who impatiently expect their decease,
301. What is the use of riches? 302. Riches need not be coveted,
since our real wants are easily supplied, 303. If there were nobody
to see a display of riches besides their possessor, their chief value
would cease, 304. When nobody looks on, riches signify nothing, 305.

HOW A MAN MAY INOFFENSIVELY PRAISE HIMSELF WITHOUT BEING LIABLE TO
ENVY.

By Mr. Lancaster, Fellow of Baliol College in Oxford.

An arrogant boaster is universally condemned, 306. Yet there are
times when a man may fitly praise himself, 307. A man may vindicate
his worthy acts when maligned by others, 309. Instances of this
in Pericles, Pelopidas, Epaminondas, 309. A man grappling with
ill-fortune may vindicate himself, 310. A man may do it, if treated
ungratefully, 311. Or if unjustly accused of evil acts, 312. A man
may indirectly praise himself by praising others who are of similar
character, 313. Envy may be forestalled by giving the credit of our
good actions to Fortune or to God, 314; and by admissions of partial
wrong in our character or conduct, 316, 317. We may praise ourselves
when it seems to be for the advantage of others, 318; and when by so
doing we may silence an insolent and blustering man, 319. When evil
conduct is praised, and we may attract the attention of the company
to a worthier example, 320. In general we should avoid talking about
ourselves, 321. This habit engenders boasting and vain-glory, 322. It
leads to the disparagement of others, 323. We should hear our praises
uttered with modesty and caution, 324; otherwise we incur disgrace,
325.

CONCERNING THE PROCREATION OF THE SOUL, AS DISCOURSED IN TIMAEUS.

By John Philips, Gent.

Opinion of Plato concerning the soul, 326. Quotation from the Timaeus
of Plato, 326. Opinions of Xenocrates and Crantor, 327. Plato held
the eternity of matter, 328, 353. Nature of the soul, according
to Plato, 329, 330. The material of which the world was formed,
originally a shapeless mass existing from eternity, 331. It was
arranged in perfect and beautiful forms by God, 331, 336. The soul
of the world, 332, 351. Origin of evil, 333, 334. Reconciliation of
Plato with himself, 335-337. His real meaning, 337. The four original
elements of all created, corporeal things, 337. The soul is both
created and uncreated, 338. The subject illustrated by geometry and
the doctrine of ratios, 339-345. And by the musical scale, 345-349.
Relation of spirit to matter, 350. The opinion of those philosophers
refuted who make the soul a compound of both, 351. The soul of the
world, what? 352. The divisible and the indivisible: the Other and
the Same, 326, 350, 354, _et seq._ The four elements, how
related, 355. Generation, what? 356. Two discordant principles rule
the world,—Fate or Necessity, and Intelligence or Wisdom, 357, 358.
The soul is not altogether the workmanship of the Deity, 359. Another
illustration from geometry, 360. Illustration from the planetary
system, 361, 362. And from musical science, 361, 367.

THAT A PHILOSOPHER OUGHT CHIEFLY TO CONVERSE WITH GREAT MEN.

By Knightly Chetwood.

Instruction in philosophy not to be denied to men of quality, 368.
The true idea of philosophy, 369. If useful to any, it may be
especially useful to men who lead and govern, 370. Absurdity of the
contrary supposition, 371. Great value of true philosophy, 372.
Reputation valuable to a philosopher as a means of usefulness, 373. A
philosopher will delight in giving his instructions where they will
have the widest influence, 374, 375. Even an ordinary mechanic would
be pleased if he knew his machine would be put to a noble use, 376.

A DISCOURSE CONCERNING SOCRATES’S DAEMON.

By Mr. Creech.

Introduction, 378. Supposed conversation among some friends
respecting affairs at Thebes, at the period of the return of the
exiles, 379-382. About Pelopidas, Epaminondas, Charon, Archias,
Leontidas, Lysanoridas, 381, 382. Plan for liberating Thebes from
the Spartan rule, 382. Strange portents and omens, 383-385. Recourse
to Egypt for the interpretation of a strange, antiquated writing,
383-385. The writing interpreted, 386. Folly of superstition, 387.
Socrates pursued a more rational method, 387. What shall we think
of his Daemon? 388. Was it some trifling thing, as an omen or a
sneeze? 389, 391. It could be nothing but sound judgment, 390. A
stranger from Italy introduced, 392. His account of affairs at
Metapontum, 393. Lysis had escaped from massacre at Metapontum, and
been hospitably received at Thebes, 394. Theanor, the stranger,
offers money in requital for the kindness bestowed on Lysis, 394.
The offer refused, and why, 395. Discourse of Epaminondas thereon,
396-398. Epaminondas has a good Daemon, 399. The conversation turns
on the liberation of Thebes from the Spartan garrison, 400. Fear that
the plot is discovered, 401. Dreams and omens, 401, 402. The Daemon
of Socrates again, 403, 404. A strong impression made on the mind
of some extraordinary man is from a Daemon, like that of Socrates,
406. A romantic dream related, 407-411. A descent into the infernal
regions, 409. Daemons are seen there; their connection with human
beings on earth, 410, 411. The Pythagorean philosophy respecting
dreams, daemons, and sacred impulses, 412, 413. Epaminondas refuses
to kill any citizen without process of law, 414. Slaughter of the
Spartan commanders and liberation of Thebes, 414-423.

OF CURIOSITY, OR AN OVER-BUSY INQUISITIVENESS INTO THINGS IMPERTINENT.

By Maurice Wheeler, Late of Christ Church, Oxon.

Uncomfortable houses may be so altered as to be made comfortable,
424. In like manner, we may so change our personal habits as to
become agreeable to ourselves and others, 425. One habit needing
to be changed may be that of a vain curiosity, 425. Let us make a
thorough self-inspection, 426. Those who eagerly pry into the affairs
of others are apt to be ignorant of themselves, 427, 428. It is rude
and indecent to intrude into the private concerns of others, 429. It
is also attended with danger, 430. Curiosity may be wisely and safely
indulged by inquiries into the phenomena of nature and the history
of great events, 431. But such things do not satisfy a perverse
and prurient curiosity, 432. Such curiosity proceeds from spite or
envy, 432. People so inclined search into matters which men wish to
keep secret, 433. Such people cannot endure the quiet of a country
life, 434. They eagerly inquire for news, 434. We carefully guard
ourselves against inquisitive persons, 435. The practice procures
its own punishment, 437. To cure ourselves of the habit of idle
curiosity, forbear to notice little things, 438. Do not peep in at
doors and windows, 439. Do not mix with low people, 441. Do not look
at beautiful women, 442. Restrain the impulse of curiosity, even in
lawful things, 443. Spies and informers, even when employed by the
government, are always hated, 444.

HOW A MAN MAY BE SENSIBLE OF HIS PROGRESS IN VIRTUE.

By Mr. Tod, of University College in Oxford.

There can be no progress in virtue while habits of wrong-doing
continue unchanged, 446. A change from vice to virtue is not
instantaneous, it must be progressive, 447. The opinion of the
Stoics confuted that all men are equally vicious, 448. As there are
degrees of moral improvement, they are easily discernible, 449.
Constant endeavors to be good may inspire confidence of success, 450.
It is a good sign if our efforts after moral improvement become more
intense and constant, 451. And if difficulties gradually disappear,
452. Examples given, 453. It is a good sign if the ridicule or
opposition of friends do not induce us to leave our studies, 454.
What may evince proficiency in virtue, 455. Many fail of advantage
from the study of philosophy, 456. In hearing lectures or reading,
attend to things spoken rather than the words, 457. Do not read
merely to admire the style, 457. Be more ready to hear than to
speak, 459. Maintain an unruffled temper, 459. Cultivate presence of
mind, 460. Be guided by truth rather than ostentation, 461. Exercise
self-restraint, 461; and moderation, 462. Cultivate a serious spirit,
463. Be willing to receive admonition, 464, 465. When in the wrong,
willingly acknowledge it, 466. Effects of careful and persistent
training, 468. Pleasant dreams indicate proficiency in virtue, 469.
Not only love and admire but imitate virtuous examples, 470. Let
some virtuous example ever be in our thoughts, 472. Cultivate the
acquaintance of the wise and good, 473. Carefully avoid every fault,
474.

OF FORTUNE

By William Baxter, Gent.

Does Fortune rule the affairs of men? 475. What influence could
it have in the affairs of Aristides, Scipio, Alexander, and men
like them? 475. Are there not such things as wisdom, justice,
moderation, and fortitude? 476. And are not these qualities of
supreme importance? 477. Were it not for our reason, we should be far
inferior to the brutes, 478. What place has Fortune in the affairs of
carpenters, artists, and painters? 479. If reason and good counsel
are of service in the mechanic arts, why not in affairs of state? 480.

OF VIRTUE AND VICE

By the Same Hand.

As our clothing does not impart heat to our bodies, so ample
possessions cannot make us happy, 482. Virtue can make any condition
in life pleasant and delightful, 483. A man’s vices inflict on him
misery which he cannot avoid, 483. They allow him no rest, day or
night, 484. Worldly abundance only aggravates the disorders of the
mind, 484. Virtue makes a man happy anywhere, 485.

CONJUGAL PRECEPTS

By John Philips, Gent.

Introduction, 486. Avoid the first occasions of discord, 487.
There should be a conformity of tastes and manners, 488. The wife
must prefer the society of her husband to that of all others, 488.
The husband must avoid a morose, imperious behavior, 489. Let all
things be managed with the consent of both parties, 489. The wife,
if limited in expenses, must cheerfully submit, 490. She must not
chide her husband before others, 490. She should study to reflect
his character, 490. She should share his recreations and his cares,
491. If the husband takes another woman on an excursion of pleasure,
let not the wife show anger, 491. The caresses of conjugal life
should be proffered by the husband only, 492. A wife must have no
private friendships, 492. _Meum et tuum_ must have no place
in married life, 493. The petty altercations of man and wife, if
of daily occurrence, render the connection insupportable, 494. The
parties immediately concerned can best tell where the shoe pinches,
494. A wife wins her husband’s affection most readily by sweetness
of disposition, 494. The wife should make a proper use of her
mirror, 495. A woman is adorned more by discretion, humility, and
modesty, than by gold or diamonds, 495. Anger and reproach should be
banished from the household, 496. A wife must not be a slut, 496. She
should avoid affectation and being over nice, 497. She should avoid
extravagance in dress, 497. She should guard her lips in the hearing
of strangers, 498. She must not attempt to control her husband,
498. The husband’s government must be that of love, 498. The wife
should so gain her husband’s love as not to lessen his affection
for his mother, 499. When the husband is in a passion, it is best
for the wife to hold her peace, 500. Women are rarely jealous of
their husbands when other women let them alone, 501. Let the husband
abstain from unlawful embraces, 503. Let him respect and honor his
wife, 504. Concluding counsels 505-507.

INDEX

PLUTARCH’S MORALS.

VOL. II.

THE BANQUET OF THE SEVEN WISE MEN.

THE SEVEN,—SOLON, BIAS, THALES, ANACHARSIS, CLEOBULUS, PITTACUS,
CHILO.[1]

NILOXENUS, EUMETIS, ALEXIDEMUS, PERIANDER, ARDALUS, ESOP, CLEODEMUS,
MNESIPHILUS, CHERSIAS, GORGIAS, DIOCLES.

DIOCLES TO NICARCHUS.

1. No wonder, my friend Nicarchus, to find old truths so disguised,
and the words and actions of men so grossly misrepresented and lamely
delivered, seeing people are so disposed to give ear and credit to
fictions of yesterday’s standing. For there were not merely seven
present at that feast, as you were informed; there were more than
double the number. I was there myself in person and familiarly
acquainted with Periander (my art had gained me his acquaintance); and
Thales boarded at my house, at the request and upon the recommendation
of Periander. Whoever then gave you that account of our feast did it
very badly; it is plain he did it upon hearsay, and that he was not
there among us. Now, since we are together and at leisure, and possibly
we may not live to find an opportunity so convenient another time, I
will (seeing you desire it) give you a faithful account of the whole
proceedings at that meeting.

2. Periander had prepared a dinner for us, not in the town, but in a
dining-hall at Lechaeum which stands close to the temple of Venus, to
whom there was a sacrifice that day. For having neglected the duty
ever since his mother died for love, he was resolved now to atone
for the omission, being warned so to do by the dreams of Melissa. In
order thereunto, there was provided a rich chariot for every one of
the guests. It was summer-time, and every part of the way quite to
the seaside was hardly passable, by reason of throngs of people and
whole clouds of dust. As soon as Thales espied the chariot waiting
at the door, he smilingly discharged it, and we walked through the
fields to avoid the press and noise. There was in our company a third
person, Niloxenus a Naucratian, an eminent man, who was very intimately
acquainted with Solon and Thales in Egypt; he had a message to deliver
to Bias, and a letter sealed, the contents whereof he knew not; only
he guessed it contained a second question to be resolved by Bias,
and in case Bias undertook not to answer it, he had in commission to
impart it to the wisest men in Greece. What a fortune is this (quoth
Niloxenus) to find you all together! This paper (showing it us) I am
bringing to the banquet. Thales replied, after his wonted smiling way,
If it contains any hard question, away with it to Priene. Bias will
resolve it with the same readiness he did your former problem. What
problem was that? quoth he. Why, saith Thales, a certain person sent
him a beast for sacrifice with this command, that he should return him
that part of his flesh which was best and worst; our philosopher very
gravely and wisely pulled out the tongue of the beast, and sent it to
the donor;—which single act procured him the name and reputation of
a very wise man. It was not this act alone that advanced him in the
estimation of the world, quoth Niloxenus; but he joyfully embraces what
you so carefully shun, the acquaintance and friendship of kings and
great men; and whereas he honors you for divers great accomplishments,
he particularly admires you for this invention, that with little labor
and no help of any mathematical instrument you took so truly the height
of one of the pyramids; for fixing your staff erect at the point of
the shadow which the pyramid cast, two triangles being thus made by
the tangent rays of the sun, you demonstrated that what proportion one
shadow had to the other, such the pyramid bore to the stick.

But, as I said, you are accused of being a hater of kings, and certain
back friends of yours have presented Amasis with a paper of yours
stuffed with sentences reproachful to majesty; as for instance, being
at a certain time asked by Molpagoras the Ionian, what the most absurd
thing was you had observed in your notice, you replied, An old king.
Another time, in a dispute that happened in your company about the
nature of beasts, you affirmed that of wild beasts, a king, of tame, a
flatterer was the worst. Such apophthegms must needs be unacceptable to
kings, who pretend there is vast difference between them and tyrants.
This was Pittacus’s reply to Myrsilus, and it was spoken in jest, quoth
Thales; nor was it an old king I said I should marvel at, but an old
pilot. In this mistake, however, I am much of the youth’s mind who,
throwing a stone at a bitch, hit his stepmother, adding, Not so bad. I
therefore esteemed Solon a very wise and good man, when I understood he
refused empire; and if Pittacus had not taken upon himself a monarchy,
he had never exclaimed, O ye Gods! how hard a matter it is to be good!
And Periander, however he seems to be sick of his father’s disease,
is yet to be commended that he gives ear to wholesome discourses
and converses only with wise and good men, rejecting the advice of
Thrasybulus my countryman, who would have persuaded him to chop off
the heads of his nobility. For a prince that chooses rather to govern
slaves than freemen is like a foolish farmer, who throws his wheat and
barley in the streets, to fill his barns with swarms of locusts and
whole cages of birds. For government has one good thing to make amends
for the many evils attending it, namely, honor and glory, provided the
ruler rules good men because he is better than they, and great men
seeming to be greater than they. But he that having ascended the throne
minds only his own interest and ease, remitting all care and concern
for the welfare of the subject, is fitter to tend sheep or to drive
horses or to feed cattle than to govern men of reason.

But this stranger (continues he) has engaged us in a deal of
impertinent chat, for we have neglected to speak or offer any discourse
suitable to the occasion and end of our meeting; for doubtless it
becomes the guest, as well as the host, to make preparation beforehand.
It is reported that the Sybarites used to invite their neighbors’
wives a whole twelve-month before to their entertainments, that they
might have convenient time to trim and adorn themselves; for my part,
I am of opinion, that he who would feast as he should ought to allow
himself more time for preparation than they, it being a more difficult
matter to compose the mind into an agreeable temper than to fit one’s
clothes for the outward ornament of the body. For a prudent man comes
not hither only to fill his belly, as if he were to fill a bottle,
but to be sometimes grave and serious, sometimes pleasant, sometimes
to listen to others, and sometimes to speak himself what may benefit
or divert the company, if the meeting is intended for any good use or
purpose. For if the victuals be not good, men may let them alone, or if
the wine be bad, men may use water; but for a weak-headed, impertinent,
unmannerly, shallow fellow-commoner there is no cure; he mars all the
mirth and music, and spoils the best entertainment in the world.
And it will be no easy business to rid one’s self of a sullen temper
when once entertained; since we find divers men, affronted in their
debauches, have yet remembered the provocation to their dying day,
the spite remaining like a surfeit arising from wrong done or anger
conceived in drinking wine. Wherefore Chilo did very well and wisely;
for when he was invited yesterday, he would not promise to come till
he had a particular given him of all their names who were to meet him.
For, quoth he, if my business calls me to sea or I am pressed to serve
my prince in his wars, there is a necessity upon me to rest contented
with whatever company I fall into, though never so unsuitable to my
quality or disagreeable to my nature and humor; but voluntarily and
needlessly to associate myself with any riffraff rabble would ill
become any man pretending to but common discretion.

The Egyptian skeleton which they brought into their feasts and exposed
to the view of their guests, with this advice, that they should not in
their merriment forget they would shortly be themselves such as that
was,—though it was a sight not so acceptable (as may be supposed),—had
yet this conveniency and use, to incite the spectators not to luxury
and drunkenness but to mutual love and friendship, persuading them not
to protract a life in itself short and uncertain by a tedious course of
wickedness.

3. In discourses of this kind we spent our time by the way, and were
now come to the house. Here Thales would not be washed, for he had but
a while before anointed himself; wherefore he took a round to view the
horse-race and the wrestling-place, and the grove upon the water-side,
which was neatly trimmed and beautified by Periander; this he did, not
so much to satisfy his own curiosity (for he seldom or never admired
any thing he saw), but that he might not disoblige Periander or seem
to overlook or despise the glory and magnificence of our host. Of the
rest every one, after he had anointed and washed himself, the servants
introduced into a particular room, purposely fitted and prepared for
the men; they were guided thither through a porch, in which Anacharsis
sat, and there was a certain young lady with him arranging his hair.
This lady stepping forward to welcome Thales, he saluted her most
courteously, and smiling said: Madam, make the stranger fair and
pleasant, so that, being (as he is) the mildest man in the world, he
may not be fearful and hideous for us to look on. When I was curious
to enquire who this lady was whom Thales thus complimented, he said,
Do you not yet know the wise and famous Eumetis?—for so her father
calls her, though others call her after her father’s name Cleobulina.
Doubtless, saith Niloxenus, they call her by this name to commend her
judgment and wit, and her reach into the more abstruse and recondite
part of learning; for I have myself in Egypt seen and read some
problems first started and discussed by her. Not so, saith Thales,
for she plays with these as men do with cockal-bones, and encounters
boldly all she meets, without study or premeditation; she is a person
of an admirable understanding, of a politic capacious mind, of a very
obliging conversation, and one that by her rhetoric and the sweetness
of her temper prevails upon her father to govern his subjects with
the greatest mildness in the world. How popular she is appears, saith
Niloxenus, plainly to any that observes her pleasant innocent garb. But
pray, continues he, wherefore is it that she shows such tenderness and
affection to Anacharsis? Because, replied Thales, he is a temperate and
learned man, who fully and freely makes known to her those mysterious
ways of dieting and physicing the sick which are now in use among the
Scythians; and I doubt not she now coaxes and courts the old gentleman
at the rate you see, taking this opportunity to discourse with him and
learn something of him.

As we were come near the dining-room, Alexidemus the Milesian, a
bastard son of Thrasybulus the Tyrant, met us. He seemed to be
disturbed, and in an angry tone muttered to himself some words which
we could not distinctly hear; but espying Thales, and recovering
himself out of his disorder, he complained how Periander had put an
insufferable affront upon him. He would not permit me, saith he, to
go to sea, though I earnestly importuned him, but he would press me
to dine with him. And when I came as invited, he assigned me a seat
unbecoming my person and character, Aeolians and islanders and others
of inferior rank being placed above me; whence it is easy to infer how
meanly he thinks of my father, and it is undeniable how this affront
put upon me rebounds disgracefully in my parent’s face. Say you so?
quoth Thales, are you afraid lest the place lessen or diminish your
honor and worth, as the Egyptians commonly hold the stars are magnified
or lessened according to their higher or lower place and position?
And are you more foolish than that Spartan who, when the prefect of
the music had appointed him to sit in the lowest seat in the choir,
replied, This is prudently done, for this is the ready way to bring
this seat into repute and esteem? It is a frivolous consideration,
where or below whom we sit; and it is a wiser part to adapt ourselves
to the judgment and humor of our right and left hand man and the
rest of the company, that we may approve ourselves worthy of their
friendship, when they find we take no pet at our host, but are rather
pleased to be placed near such good company. And whosoever is disturbed
upon the account of his place seems to be more angry with his neighbor
than with his host, but certainly is very troublesome and nauseous to
both.

These are fine words, and no more, quoth Alexidemus, for I observe you,
the wisest of men, as ambitious as other men; and having said thus,
he passed by us doggedly and trooped off. Thales, seeing us admiring
the innocence of the man, declared he was a fellow naturally of a
blockish, stupid disposition; for when he was a boy, he took a parcel
of rich perfume that was presented to Thrasybulus and poured it into a
large bowl, and mixing it with a quantity of wine, he drank it off and
was ever hated for it. As Thales was talking after this fashion, in
comes a servant and tells us it was Periander’s pleasure we would come
in and inform him what we thought of a certain creature brought into
his presence that instant, whether it were so born by chance or were
a prodigy and omen;—himself seeming mightily affected and concerned,
for he judged his sacrifice polluted by it. At the same time he walked
before us into a certain house adjoining to his garden-wall, where we
found a young beardless shepherd, tolerably handsome, who having opened
a leathern bag produced and showed us a child born (as he averred) of
a mare. His upper part, as far as his neck and his hands, was of human
shape, and the rest of his body resembled a perfect horse; his cry was
like that of a child newly born. As soon as Niloxenus saw it, he cried
out, The Gods deliver us; and away he fled as one sadly affrighted.
But Thales eyed the shepherd a considerable while, and then smiling
(for it was his way to jeer me perpetually about my art) says he, I
doubt not, Diocles, but you have been all this time seeking for some
expiatory offering, and intending to call to your aid those Gods whose
province and work it is to avert evils from men, as if some great and
grievous thing had happened. Why not? quoth I, for undoubtedly this
prodigy portends sedition and war, and I fear the dire portents thereof
may extend to myself, my wife, and my children, and prove all our ruin;
since, before I have atoned for my former fault, the Goddess gives us
this second evidence and proof of her displeasure. Thales replied never
a word, but laughing went out of the house. Periander, meeting him
at the door, enquired what we thought of that creature; he dismissed
me, and taking Periander by the hand, said, Whatsoever Diodes shall
persuade you to do, do it at your best leisure; but I advise you either
not to have such young men to keep your mares, or to give them leave
to marry. When Periander heard him out, he seemed infinitely pleased,
for he laughed outright, and hugging Thales in his arms he kissed him;
then saith he, O Diocles, I am apt to think the worst is over, and what
this prodigy portended is now at an end; for do you not apprehend what
a loss we have sustained in the want of Alexidemus’s good company at
supper?

4. When we entered into the house, Thales raising his voice enquired
where it was his worship refused to be placed; which being shown him,
he sat himself in that very place, and prayed us to sit down by him,
and said, I would gladly give any money to have an opportunity to
sit and eat with Ardalus. This Ardalus was a Troezenian by birth, by
profession a minstrel, and a priest of the Ardalian Muses, whose temple
old Ardalus had founded and dedicated. Here Esop, who was sent from
Croesus to visit Periander, and withal to consult the oracle at Delphi,
sitting by and beneath Solon upon a low stool, told the company this
fable: A Lydian mule, viewing his own picture in a river, and admiring
the bigness and beauty of his body, raises his crest; he waxes proud,
resolving to imitate the horse in his gait and running; but presently,
recollecting his extraction, how that his father was but an ass at
best, he stops his career and checks his own haughtiness and bravery.
Chilo replied, after his short laconic way, You are slow and yet try to
run, in imitation of your mule.

Amidst these discourses in comes Melissa and sits her down by
Periander; Eumetis followed and came in as we were at supper; then
Thales calls to me (I sat me down above Bias), Why do you not make
Bias acquainted with the problems sent him from the King by Niloxenus
this second time, that he may soberly and warily weigh them? Bias
answered, I have been already scared with that news. I have known that
Bacchus is otherwise a powerful God, and for his wisdom is termed
λύσιος, that is, _the interpreter_; therefore I shall undertake
it when my belly is full of wine. Thus they jested and reparteed and
played one upon another all the while they sat at table. Observing
the unwonted frugality of Periander at this time, I considered with
myself that the entertainment of wise and good men is a piece of good
husbandry, and that so far from enhancing a man’s expenses in truth it
serves to save charge, the charge (to wit) of costly foreign unguents
and junkets, and the waste of the richest wines, which Periander’s
state and greatness required him every day in his ordinary treats to
expend. Such costly provisions were useless here, and Periander’s
wisdom appeared in his frugality. Moreover, his lady had laid aside her
richer habit, and appeared in an ordinary, but a very becoming dress.

5. Supper now ended, and Melissa having distributed the garlands, we
offered sacrifice; and when the minstrel had played us a tune or two,
she withdrew. Then Ardalus enquired of Anacharsis, if there were women
fiddlers at Scythia. He suddenly and smartly replied, There are no
vines there. Ardalus asked a second question, whether the Scythians had
any Gods among them. Yes, quoth Anacharsis, and they understand what
men say to them; nor are the Scythians of the Grecian opinion (however
these last may be the better orators), that the Gods are better
pleased with the sounds of flutes and pipes than with the voice of
men. My friend, saith Esop, what would you say if you saw our present
pipe-makers throw away the bones of fawns and hind-calves, to use those
of asses, affirming they yield the sweeter and more melodious sound?
Whereupon Cleobulina made one of her riddles about the Phrygian flute,
... in regard to the sound, and wondered that an ass, a gross animal
and no lover of music, should yet afford bones so fit for harmony.
Therefore it is doubtless, quoth Niloxenus, that the people of Busiris
accuse us Naucratians of folly for using pipes made of asses’ bones, it
being an insufferable fault in any of them to listen to the flute or
cornet, the sound thereof being (as they esteem it) so like the braying
of an ass; and you know an ass is hateful to the Egyptians on account
of Typhon.

6. There happening here a short silence, Periander, observing Niloxenus
willing but not daring to speak, said: I cannot but commend the
civility of those magistrates who give audience first to strangers
and afterwards to their own citizens; wherefore I judge it convenient
that we inhabitants and neighbors should proceed no farther at
present in our discourse, and that now attention be given to those
royal propositions sent us from Egypt, which the worthy Niloxenus
is commissioned to deliver to Bias, who desires that he and we may
scan and examine them together. And Bias said: For where or in what
company would a man more joyfully adventure to give his opinion than
here in this? And since it is his Majesty’s pleasure that I should
give my judgment first, in obedience to his commands I will do so, and
afterwards they shall come to every one of you in order.

Then Niloxenus delivered the paper to Bias, who broke up the seal and
commanded it to be read in all their hearing. The contents were these:—

Amasis the king of Egypt, to Bias, the wisest of the Grecians,
greeting. There is a contest between my brother of Ethiopia and
myself about wisdom; and being baffled in divers other particulars,
he now demands of me a thing absurd and impracticable; for he
requires me to drink up the ocean dry. If I be able to read this
his riddle, divers cities and towns now in his possession are to be
annexed to my kingdom; but if I cannot resolve this hard sentence,
and give him the right meaning thereof, he requires of me my right
to all the towns bordering upon Elephantina. Consider with speed the
premises, and let me receive your thoughts by Niloxenus. Pray lose no
time. If in any thing I can be serviceable to your city or friends,
you may command me. Farewell.

Bias, having perused and for a little time meditated upon the letter,
and whispering Cleobulus in the ear (he sat by him), exclaimed: What a
narration is here, O Niloxenus! Will Amasis, who governs so many men
and is seized of so many flourishing territories, drink up the ocean
for the gain of a few paltry, beggarly villages? Niloxenus replied
with a smile: Consider, good sir, what is to be done, if he will obey.
Why then, said Bias, let Amasis require the Ethiopian king to stop the
streams which from all parts flow and empty themselves in the ocean,
until he have drunk out the whole remainder; for I conceive he means
the present waters, not those which shall flow into it hereafter.
Niloxenus was so overjoyed at this answer, that he could not contain
himself. He hugged and kissed the author, and the whole company liked
his opinion admirably well; and Chilo laughing desired Niloxenus to get
aboard immediately before the sea was consumed, and tell his master he
should mind more how to render his government sweet and potable to his
people, than how to swallow such a quantity of salt water. For Bias, he
told him, understands these things very well, and knows how to oblige
your lord with very useful instructions, which if he vouchsafe to
attend, he shall no more need a golden basin to wash his feet, to gain
respect from his subjects; all will love and honor him for his virtue,
though he were ten thousand times more hateful to them than he is.
It were well and worthily done, quoth Periander, if all of us did pay
him our first-fruits in this kind by the poll (as Homer said). Such a
course would bring him an accession of profit greater than the whole
profit of the voyage, besides being of no little use to ourselves.

7. To this point it is fit that Solon should first speak, quoth Chilo,
not only because he is the eldest in the company and therefore sits
uppermost at table, but because he governs and gives laws to the
amplest and most complete and flourishing republic in the world, that
of Athens. Here Niloxenus whispered me in the ear: O Diocles, saith he,
how many reports fly about and are believed, and how some men delight
in lies which they either feign of their own heads or most greedily
swallow from the mouths of others. In Egypt I heard it reported how
Chilo had renounced all friendship and correspondence with Solon,
because he maintained the mutability of laws. A ridiculous fiction,
quoth I, for then he and we must have renounced Lycurgus, who changed
the laws and indeed the whole government of Sparta.

Solon, pausing awhile, gave his opinion in these words: I conceive that
monarch, whether king or tyrant, were infinitely to be commended, who
would exchange his monarchy for a commonwealth. Bias subjoined, And who
would be first and foremost in conforming to the laws of his country.
Thales added, I reckon that prince happy, who, being old, dies in his
bed a natural death. Fourthly, Anacharsis, If he alone be a wise man.
Fifthly, Cleobulus said, If he trust none of his courtiers. Sixthly,
Pittacus spake thus, If he could cause his subjects to have fear not
of him but for him. Lastly, Chilo concluded thus, A magistrate ought
to have thoughts, purposes, and resolutions not mean and earthly, but
divine and immortal.

When all had given in their judgments upon this point, we requested
Periander he would condescend to give the company the satisfaction to
let them know his thoughts upon the same head. Disorder and discontent
appearing in his countenance, he said, These opinions are enough to
scare any wise man from affecting empire. These things, saith Esop
after his fault-finding way, ought rather to have been discussed
privately among ourselves, lest we be accounted antimonarchical while
we desire to be esteemed friends and loyal counsellors. Solon, gently
clapping him upon the shoulder and smiling, answered: Do you not
perceive that any one would make a king more moderate and a tyrant
more favorable, who should persuade him that it is better not to reign
than to reign? Then we must believe you before the oracle delivered
unto you, quoth Esop, which pronounced that city happy that heard but
one crier. Yes, quoth Solon, and Athens, though now a commonwealth,
hath but one crier and one magistrate, and that is the law, though
the government be democratical; but you, my friend, have been so
accustomed to the croaking of ravens and the prating of jays, that you
do not hear your own voice. For you maintain it to be the happiness
of a city to be under the command of one man, and yet account it the
praise of a feast if liberty is allowed every man to speak his mind
freely upon what subject he pleases. But you have not prohibited your
servants’ drunkenness, as you have forbidden them to love or to use dry
ointments. Solon laughed at this; but Cleodorus the physician said: To
use dry ointment is like talking when a man is drenched with wine; both
are very pleasant. Therefore, saith Chilo, it concerns men the more
carefully to avoid it. Esop proceeds, Thales seemed to imply that he
should soon grow old.

8. Periander said laughing: We suffer deservedly, for, before we have
perfected our animadversions and remarks upon the letter, we are fallen
upon disputes so strangely foreign to the matter under consideration;
and therefore I pray, Niloxenus, read out the remainder of your lord’s
letter, and slip not this opportunity to receive what satisfaction
all that are present shall be able to give you. The command of the
king of Ethiopia, says Niloxenus, is no more and no less than (to
use Archilochus’s phrase) a broken scytale; that is, the meaning is
inscrutable and cannot be found out. But your friend Amasis was more
gentle and civil in his queries; for he commanded him only to resolve
him what was most ancient, most beautiful, greatest, wisest, most
common, and withal, what was most profitable, most pernicious, most
strong, and most easy. Did he resolve and answer every one of these
questions? He did, quoth Niloxenus, and do you judge of his answers
and the soundness thereof: and it is my prince’s purpose not to
misrepresent his responses and condemn unjustly what he saith well, so,
where he finds him under a mistake, not to suffer that to pass without
correction. His answers to the foresaid questions I will read to
you.—What is most ancient? Time. What is greatest? The World. What is
wisest? Truth. What is most beautiful? The light. What is most common?
Death. What is most profitable? God. What is most pernicious? An evil
genius. What is strongest? Fortune. What is most easy? That which is
pleasant.

9. When Niloxenus had read out these answers, there was a short silence
among them; by and by Thales desires Niloxenus to inform him if Amasis
approved of these answers. Niloxenus said, he liked some and disliked
others. There is not one of them right and sound, quoth Thales, but
all are full of wretched folly and ignorance. As for instance, how can
that be most ancient whereof part is past, part is now present, and
part is yet to come; every man knows it is younger than ourselves and
our actions. As to his answer that truth is the most wise thing, it is
as incongruous as if he had affirmed the light to be an eye; if he
judged the light to be the most beautiful, how could he overlook the
sun; as to his solutions concerning the Gods and evil geniuses, they
are full of presumption and peril. What he saith of Fortune is void
of sense, for her inconstancy and fickleness proceeds from want of
strength and power. Nor is death the most common thing; the living are
still at liberty, it hath not arrested them. But lest we be censured as
having a faculty to find fault only, we will lay down our opinions of
these things, and compare them with those of the Ethiopian; and I offer
myself first, if Niloxenus pleases, to deliver my opinion on every one
singly, and I will relate both questions and answers in that method
and order in which they were sent to Ethiopia and read to us. What is
most ancient? Thales answered, God, for he had no beginning. What is
greatest? Place; the world contains all other things, this surrounds
and contains the world. What is most beautiful? The world; for whatever
is framed artificially and methodically is a part of it. What is most
wise? Time; for it has found out some things already, it will find out
the rest in due time. What is most common? Hope; for they that want
other things are masters of this. What is most profitable? Virtue; for
by a right managery of other things she makes them all beneficial and
advantageous. What is most pernicious? Vice; for it depraves the best
things we enjoy. What is the most strong? Necessity; for this alone is
insuperable. What is most easy? That which is most agreeable to nature;
for pleasures themselves are sometimes tedious and nauseating.

10. All the consult approved of Thales’s solutions. Then Cleodemus
said: My friend Niloxenus, it becomes kings to propound and resolve
such questions; but the insolence of that barbarian who would have
Amasis drink the sea would have been better fitted by such a smart
reprimand as Pittacus gave Alyattes, who sent an imperious letter to
the Lesbians. He made him no answer, except to bid him spend his time
in eating his hot bread and onions.

Periander here assumed the discourse, and said: It was the manner of
the ancient Grecians heretofore, O Cleodemus, to propound doubts to one
another; and it hath been told us, that the most famous and eminent
poets once met at the grave of Amphidamas in Chalcis. This Amphidamas
was a leading citizen, one that had perpetual wars with the Eretrians,
and at last lost his life in one of the battles fought for the
possession of the Lelantine plain. Now, because the writings of those
poets were composed in verse, and so made the argument more knotty and
the decision more difficult, and the great names of the antagonists,
Homer and Hesiod, whose excellence was so well known, made the umpires
timorous and shy to determine; they therefore betook themselves to
these sorts of questions, and Homer, says Lesches, propounded this
riddle:—

Tell me, O Muse, what never was
And never yet shall be.

Hesiod answered readily and extempore in this wise:—

When steeds with sounding hoof, to win
The prize, shall run amain;
And at the tomb of mighty Jove
Their chariots break in twain.

For this reply he was infinitely commended and won the tripod. Pray
tell me, quoth Cleodemus, what difference there is between these
riddles and those of Eumetis, which she frames and invents to recreate
herself with as much pleasure as other virgins make nets and girdles?
They may be fit to offer and puzzle women withal; but for men to beat
their brains to find out their mystery would be mighty ridiculous.
Eumetis looked like one that had a great mind to reply; but her modesty
would not permit her, for her face was filled with blushes. But Esop in
her vindication asked: Is it not much more ridiculous that all present
cannot resolve the riddle she propounded to us before supper? This was
as follows:—

A man I saw, who by his fire
Did set a piece of brass
Fast to a man, so that it seemed
To him it welded was.

Can you tell me, said he, how to construe this, and what the sense of
it may be? No, said Cleodemus, nor do I care to know what it means. And
yet, quoth Esop, no man understands this thing better and practises
it more judiciously and successfully than yourself. If you deny it, I
have my witnesses ready; for there are your cupping-glasses. Cleodemus
laughed outright; for of all the physicians in his time, none used
cupping-glasses like him, he being a person that by his frequent and
fortunate application thereof brought them first into request in the
world.

11. Mnesiphilus the Athenian, a friend and favorite of Solon’s, said:
O Periander, our discourse, as our wine, ought to be distributed not
according to our power or priority, but freely and equally, as in
a popular state; for what hath been already discoursed concerning
kingdoms and empires signifies little to us who live in a democracy.
Wherefore I judge it convenient that every one of you beginning with
Solon, should freely and impartially declare his sense of a popular
state. The motion pleased all the company; then saith Solon: My friend
Mnesiphilus, you heard, together with the rest of this good company,
my opinion concerning republics; but since you are willing to hear
it again, I hold that city or state happy and most likely to remain
democratic, in which those that are not personally injured are yet as
forward to question and correct wrong-doers as that person who is more
immediately wronged. Bias added, Where all fear the law as they fear a
tyrant. Thirdly, Thales said, Where the citizens are neither too rich
nor too poor. Fourthly, Anacharsis said, Where, though in all other
respects they are equal, yet virtuous men are advanced and vicious
persons degraded. Fifthly, Cleobulus said, Where the rulers fear
reproof and shame more than the law. Sixthly, Pittacus said, Where bad
men are prohibited from ruling, and good men from not ruling. Chilo,
pausing a little while, determined that the best and most durable
state was where the subject minded the law most and the orators least.
Periander concluded with his opinion, that all of them would best
approve that democracy which came next and was likest to an aristocracy.

12. When they had ended this discourse, I begged they would condescend
to direct me how to govern a house; for they were few who had cities
and kingdoms to govern, compared with those who had houses and families
to manage. Esop laughed and said: I hope you except Anacharsis out
of your number; for having no house, he glories because he can be
contented with a chariot only, as they say the sun is whirled about
from one end of the heavens to the other in his chariot. Therefore,
saith Anacharsis, he alone, or he principally, is most free among the
Gods, and ever at his own liberty and dispose. He governs all, and is
governed and subject to none, but he rides and reigns; and you know not
how magnificent and capacious his chariot is; if you did, you would
not thus floutingly compare it with our Scythian chariots. For you
seem in my apprehension to call these coverings made of wood and mud
houses, as if you should call the shell and not the living creature a
snail. Therefore you laughed when Solon told you how, when he viewed
Croesus’s palace and found it richly and gloriously furnished, he yet
could not yield he lived happily until he had tried the inward and
invisible state of his mind; for a man’s felicity consists not in the
outward and visible favors and blessings of Fortune, but in the inward
and unseen perfections and riches of the mind. And you seem to have
forgot your own fable of the fox, who, contending with the leopard as
to which was beset with more colors and spots, and having referred the
matter in controversy to the arbitration of an umpire, desired him to
consider not so much the outside as the inside; for, saith he, I have
more various and different fetches and tricks in my mind than he has
marks or spots in his body. You regard only the handiwork of carpenters
and masons and stone-cutters, and call this a house; not what one hath
within, his children, his wife, his friends and attendants, with whom
if a man lived in an emmet’s bed or a bird’s nest, enjoying in common
the ordinary comforts of life, this man may be affirmed to live a happy
and a fortunate life.

This is the answer I purpose to return Esop, quoth Anacharsis, and
I tender it to Diocles as my share in this discourse; only let the
rest give in their opinions, if they please. Solon thought that house
most happy where the estate was got without injustice, kept without
distrust, and spent without repentance. Bias said, That house is happy
where the master does freely and voluntarily at home what the law
compels him to do abroad. Thales held that house most happy where the
master had most leisure and respite from business. Cleobulus said, That
in which the master is more beloved than feared. Pittacus said, That
is most happy where superfluities are not required and necessaries are
not wanting. Chilo added, That house is most happy where the master
rules as a monarch in his kingdom. And he proceeded, When a certain
Lacedaemonian desired Lycurgus to establish a democracy in the city, Go
you, friend, replied he, and try the experiment first in your own house.

13. When they had all given in their opinions upon this point, Eumetis
and Melissa withdrew. Then Periander called for a large bowl full of
wine, and drank to Chilo; and Chilo likewise drank to Bias. Ardalus
then standing up called to Esop, and said: Will you not hand the cup
to your friends at this end of the table, when you behold those
persons there swilling up all that good liquor, and imparting none to
us here, as if the cup were that of Bathycles. But this cup, quoth
Esop, is no public cup, it hath stood so long by Solon’s trenchard.
Then Pittacus called to Mnesiphilus: Why, saith he, does not Solon
drink, but act in contradiction to his own verses?—

I love that ruby God, whose blessings flow
In tides, to recreate my thirsty maw;
Venus I court, the Muses I adore,
Who give us wine and pleasures evermore.

Anacharsis subjoined: He fears your severe law, my friend Pittacus,
wherein you decreed the drunkard a double punishment. You seem, said
Pittacus, a little to fear the penalty, who have adventured heretofore,
and now again before my face, to break that law and to demand a crown
for the reward of your debauch. Why not, quoth Anacharsis, when there
is a reward promised to the hardest drinker? Why should I not demand
my reward, having drunk down all my fellows?—or inform me of any other
end men drive at in drinking much wine, but to be drunk. Pittacus
laughed at this reply, and Esop told them this fable: The wolf, seeing
a parcel of shepherds in their booth feeding upon a lamb, approaching
near them,—What a bustle and noise and uproar would you have made,
saith he, if I had but done what you do! Chilo said: Esop hath very
justly revenged himself upon us, who awhile ago stopped his mouth; now
he observes how we prevented Mnesiphilus’s discourse, when the question
was put why Solon did not drink up his wine.

Mnesiphilus then spake to this effect: I know this to be the opinion
of Solon, that in every art and faculty, divine and human, the work
which is done is more desired than the instrument wherewith it is done,
and the end than the means conducing to that end; as, for instance,
a weaver thinks a cloak or coat more properly his work than the
ordering of his shuttles or the divers motions of his beams. A smith
minds the soldering of his irons and the sharpening of the axe more
than those little things preparatory to these main matters, as the
kindling of the coals and getting ready the stone-dust. Yet farther,
a carpenter would justly blame us, if we should affirm it is not his
work to build houses or ships but to bore holes or to make mortar; and
the Muses would be implacably incensed with him that should say their
business is only to make harps, pipes, and such musical instruments,
not the institution and correction of manners and the government of
those men’s passions who are lovers of singing and masters of music.
And agreeably copulation is not the work of Venus, nor is drunkenness
that of Bacchus; but love and friendship, affection and familiarity,
which are begot and improved by the means of these. Solon terms these
works divine, and he professes he loves and now prosecutes them in
his declining years as vigorously as ever in his youthful days. That
mutual love between man and wife is the work of Venus, the greatness
of the pleasure affecting their bodies mixes and melts their very
souls; divers others, having little or no acquaintance before, have yet
contracted a firm and lasting friendship over a glass of wine, which
like fire softened and melted their tempers, and disposed them for a
happy union. But in such a company, and of such men as Periander hath
invited, there is no need of can and chalice, but the Muses themselves
throwing a subject of discourse among you, as it were a sober cup,
wherein is contained much of delight and drollery and seriousness
too, do hereby provoke, nourish, and increase friendship among you,
suffering the can to rest quietly upon the bowl, contrary to the rule
which Hesiod[2] gives for those who have more skill for carousing than
for discoursing,

Though all the rest with stated rules we bound,
Unmix’d, unmeasured, are thy goblets crown’d:[3]

for it was the old Greek way, as Homer here tells us, to drink one to
another in course and order. So Ajax gave a share of his meat to his
next neighbor.

When Mnesiphilus had discoursed after this manner, in comes Chersias
the poet, whom Periander had lately pardoned and received into favor
upon Chilo’s mediation. Saith Chersias: Does not Jupiter distribute
to the Gods their proportion and dividend sparingly and severally, as
Agamemnon did to his commanders when his guests drank to one another?
If, O Chersias, quoth Cleodemus, as you narrate, certain doves bring
him his ambrosia every meal, flying with a world of hardship through
the rocks called _Planctae_ (or _wandering_), can you blame
him for his sparingness and frugality and dealing out to his guests by
measure?

14. I am satisfied, quoth Chersias, and since we are fallen upon our
old discourse of housekeeping, which of the company can remember what
remains to be said thereof? There remains, if I mistake not, to show
what that measure is which may content any man. Cleobulus answered: The
law has prescribed a measure for wise men; but as touching fools, I
will tell you a story I once heard my mother relate to my brother. On a
certain time the moon begged of her mother a coat that would fit her.
How can that be done, quoth the mother, for sometimes you are full,
sometimes the one-half of you seems lost and perished, sometimes only
a pair of horns appear. So, my Chersias, to the desires of a foolish
immoderate man no certain measure can be fitted; for, according to
the ebbings and flowings of his lust and appetite, and the frequent
or seldom casualties that befall him, accordingly his necessities
ebb or flow, not unlike Esop’s dog, who, being pinched and ready to
starve with cold in winter, was of mind to build himself a house; but
when summer came on, he lay all along upon the ground, and stretching
himself in the sun thought himself monstrous big, and thought it a
needless thing and besides no small piece of work to build him a house
proportionable to that bulk and bigness. And do you not observe, O
Chersias, continues he, many poor men,—how one while they pinch their
bellies, upon what short commons they live, how sparing and niggardly
and miserable they are; and another while you may observe the same
men as distrustful and covetous withal, as if the plenty of city and
country, the riches of king and kingdom were not sufficient to preserve
them from want and beggary.

When Chersias had concluded this discourse, Cleodemus began thus: We
see you that are wise men possessing these outward goods after an
unequal manner. Good sweet sir, answered Cleobulus, the law weaver-like
hath distributed to every man a fitting, decent, adequate portion,
and in your profession your reason does what the law does here,—when
you feed, or diet, or physic your patient, you give not an equal
quantity to all, but what you judge to be convenient for each in his
circumstances. Ardalus enquires: I pray what law compels our friend and
Solon’s host, Epimenides, to abstain from all other victuals, and to
content himself with a little composition of his own, which the Greeks
call ἄλιμος (_hunger-relieving_)? This he takes into his mouth and
chews, and eats neither dinner nor supper. This instance obliged the
whole company to be a little while silent, until Thales in a jesting
way replied, that Epimenides did very wisely, for hereby he saved the
trouble and charge of grinding and boiling his food, as Pittacus did.
I myself sojourning at Lesbos overheard my landlady, as she was very
busy at her hand-mill, singing as she used to do at her work, “Grind
mill; grind mill; for even Pittacus, the prince of great Mitylene,
grinds.”[4] Quoth Solon: Ardalus, I wonder you have not read the law
of Epimenides’s frugality in Hesiod’s writings, who prescribes him and
others this spare diet; for he was the person that gratified Epimenides
with the seeds of this nutriment, when he directed him to enquire how
great benefit a man might receive by mallows and asphodel.[5] Do you
believe, said Periander, that Hesiod meant this literally; or rather
that, being himself a great admirer of parsimony, he hereby intended
to exhort men to use a mean and spare diet, as most healthful and
pleasant? For the chewing of mallows is very wholesome, and the stalk
of asphodel is very luscious; but this “expeller of hunger and thirst”
I take to be rather physic than natural food, consisting of honey and
I know not what barbarian cheese, and of many and costly seeds fetched
from foreign parts. If to make up this composition so many ingredients
were requisite, and so difficult to come by and so expensive, Hesiod
might as well have kept his breath to cool his pottage, and never
blessed the world with the discovery. And yet I admire how your host,
when he went to perform the great purification for the Delians not long
since, could overlook the monuments and patterns of the first aliment
which the people brought into the temple,—and, among other cheap
fruits such as grow of themselves, the mallows and the asphodel; the
usefulness and innocency whereof Hesiod seemed in his work to magnify.
Not only that, quoth Anacharsis, but he affirms both plants to be great
restoratives. You are in the right, quoth Cleodemus; for it is evident
Hesiod was no ordinary physician, who could discourse so learnedly
and judiciously of diet, of the nature of wines, and of the virtue of
waters and baths, and of women, the proper times for procreation, and
the site and position of infants in the womb; insomuch, that (as I take
it) Esop deserves much more the name of Hesiod’s scholar and disciple
than Epimenides, whose great and excellent wisdom the fable of the
nightingale and hawk demonstrates. But I would gladly hear Solon’s
opinion in this matter; for having sojourned long at Athens and being
familiarly acquainted with Epimenides, it is more than probable he
might learn of him the grounds upon which he accustomed himself to so
spare a diet.

15. To what purpose, said Solon, should I trouble him or myself to
make enquiry in a matter so plain? For if it be a blessing next to the
greatest to need little victuals, then it is the greatest felicity to
need none at all. If I may have leave to deliver my opinion, quoth
Cleodemus, I must profess myself of a different judgment, especially
now we sit at table; for as soon as the meat is taken away, we have
removed what belongs to those Gods that are the patrons of friendship
and hospitality. As upon the removal of the earth, quoth Thales,
there must needs follow an universal confusion of all things, so
in forbidding men meat, there must needs follow the dispersion and
dissolution of the family, the sacred fire, the cups, the feasts and
entertainments, which are the principal and most innocent diversions
of mankind; and so all the comforts of society are at end. For to men
of business some recreation is necessary, and the preparation and use
of victuals conduces much thereunto. Again, to be without victuals
would tend to the destruction of husbandry, for want whereof the
earth would soon be overgrown with weeds, and through the sloth of
men overflowed with waters. And together with this, all arts would
fail which are supported and encouraged hereby; nay, more, take away
hospitality and the use of victuals, and the worship and honor of the
Gods will sink and perish; the sun will have but small and the moon
yet smaller reverence, if they afford men only light and heat. And who
will build an altar or offer sacrifice to Jupiter Pluvius, or to Ceres
the patroness of husbandmen, or to Neptune the preserver of plants and
trees? Or how can Bacchus be any longer termed the donor of all good
things, if men make no further use of the good things he gives? What
shall men sacrifice? What first-fruits shall they offer? In short, the
subversion and confusion of the greatest blessings attend this opinion.
Promiscuously and indefatigably to pursue all sorts of pleasures
I own to be brutish, and to avoid all with a suitable aversion
equally blockish; let the mind then freely enjoy such pleasures as
are agreeable to its nature and temper. But for the body, there is
certainly no pleasure more harmless and commendable and fitting than
that which springs from a plentiful table,—which is granted by all men;
for, placing this in the middle, men converse with one another and
share in the provision. As to the pleasures of the bed, men use these
in the dark, reputing the use thereof no less shameful and beastly than
the total disuse of the pleasures of the table.

Cleodemus having finished this long harangue, I began to this effect.
You omit one thing, my friend, how they that decry food decry sleep
too, and they that declaim against sleep declaim against dreams in
the same breath, and so destroy the primitive and ancient way of
divination. Add to this, that our whole life will be of one form and
fashion, and our soul enclosed in a body to no purpose; many and those
the principal parts thereof are naturally so formed and fashioned as
to be organs of nutriment; so the tongue, the teeth, the stomach, and
the liver, whereof none are idle, none framed for other use, so that
whosoever hath no need of nutriment has no need of his body; that is,
in other words, no man hath any need of himself, for every man hath a
body of his own. This I have thought fit to offer in vindication of our
bellies; if Solon or any other has any thing to object to what I have
said, I am willing to hear him.

16. Yea, doubtless, replies Solon, or we may be reputed more
injudicious than the Egyptians. For when any person dies among them,
they open him and show him so dissected to the sun; his guts they throw
into the river, to the remaining parts they allow a decent burial, for
they think the body now pure and clean; and to speak truly, they are
the foulest parts of the body, and like that lower hell crammed with
dead carcasses and at the same time flowing with offensive rivers, such
as flame with fire and are disturbed with tempests. No live creature
feeds upon another living creature, but we first take away their lives,
and in that action we do them great wrong; forasmuch as whatsoever
is transmuted and turned into another loseth the nature which it had
before, and is corrupted that it may become nourishment to the others.
Now the very plants have life in them,—that is clear and manifest, for
we perceive they grow and spread. But to abstain from eating flesh (as
they say Orpheus of old did) is more a pretence than a real avoiding
of an injury proceeding from the just use of meat. One way there is,
and but one way, whereby a man may avoid offence, namely by being
contented with his own, not coveting what belongs to his neighbor. But
if a man’s circumstances be such and so hard that he cannot subsist
without wronging another man, the fault is God’s, not his. The case
being such with some persons, I would fain learn if it be not advisable
to destroy, at the same time with injustice, these instruments of
injustice, the belly, stomach, and liver, which have no sense of
justice or appetite to honesty, and therefore may be fitly compared to
your cook’s implements, his knives and his caldrons, or to a baker’s
chimney and bins and kneading-tubs. Verily one may observe the souls of
some men confined to their bodies, as to a house of correction, barely
to do the drudgery and to serve the necessities thereof. It was our own
case but even now. While we minded our meat and our bellies, we had
neither eyes to see nor ears to hear; but now the table is taken away,
we are free to discourse among ourselves and to enjoy one another;
and now our bellies are full, we have nothing else to do or care for.
And if this condition and state wherein we at present are would last
our whole life, we having no wants to fear nor riches to covet (for a
desire of superfluities attends a desire of necessaries), would not our
lives be much more comfortable and life itself much more desirable?

Yea, but Cleodemus stiffly maintains the necessity of eating and
drinking, else we shall want tables and cups, and shall not be able
to sacrifice to Ceres and Proserpina. By a parity of reason there
is a necessity there should be contentions and wars, that men may
have bulwarks and citadels and fortifications by land, fleets and
navies abroad at sea, and that having slain hundreds, we may offer
sacrifices (called Hecatomphonia) after the Messenian manner. By this
reason we shall find men grudging their own health, for (they will
say) there will be no need of down or feather beds unless they are
sick; and so those healing Gods, and particularly Esculapius, will be
vast sufferers, for they will infallibly lose so many fat and rich
sacrifices yearly. Nay, the art of chirurgery will perish, and all
those ingenious instruments that have been invented for the cure of
man will lie by useless and insignificant. And what great difference
is there between this and that? For meat is a medicine against hunger,
and such as keep a regular diet are said to cure themselves,—I mean
such as use meat not for wantonness but of necessity. For it is plain,
the prejudices we receive by feeding far surmount the pleasures. And
the pleasure of eating fills a very little place in our bodies and very
little time. But why should I trouble you or myself with a catalogue of
the many vexations which attend that man who is necessitated to provide
for a family, and the many difficulties which distract him in his
undertaking? For my part, I verily believe Homer had an eye to this
very thing, when, to prove the immortality of the Gods, he made use of
this very argument, that they were such because they used no victuals;

For not the bread of man their life sustains,
Nor wine’s inflaming juice supplies their veins;[6]

intimating meat to be the cause of death as well as the means of
sustaining and supporting life. From hence proceed divers fatal
distempers caused much more by fulness than by fasting; and to digest
what we have eaten proves frequently a harder matter than to provide
and procure what we eat. And when we solicitously enquire beforehand
what we should do or how we should employ ourselves if we had not such
care and business to take up our time, this is as if Danaus’s daughters
should trouble their heads to know what they should do if they had no
sieves to fill with water. We drudge and toil for necessaries, for want
of better and nobler business. As slaves then who have gained their
freedom do now and then those drudgeries and discharge those servile
employments and offices for their own benefit which they undertook
heretofore for their masters’ advantage, so the mind of man, which at
present is enslaved to the body and the service thereof, when once it
becomes free from this slavery, will take care of itself, and spend its
time in contemplation of truth without distraction or disturbance. Such
were our discourses upon this head, O Nicarchus.

17. And before Solon had fully finished, in came Gorvias, Periander’s
brother, who was just returned from Taenarum, whither he had been sent
by the advice of the oracle to sacrifice to Neptune and to conduct
a deputation. Upon his entrance we welcomed him home; and Periander
having among the rest saluted him, Gorgias sat by him upon a bed, and
privately whispered something to his brother which we could not hear.
Periander by his various gestures and motions discovered different
affections; sometimes he seemed sad and melancholic, by and by
disturbed and angry; frequently he looked as doubtful and distrustful
men use to do; awhile after he lifts up his eyes as is usual with men
in a maze. At last recovering himself, saith he, I have a mind to
impart to you the contents of this embassy; but I scarce dare do it,
remembering Thales’s aphorism, how things impossible or incredible
are to be concealed and only things credible and probable are to be
related. Bias answered, I crave leave to explain Thales’s saying, We
may distrust enemies, even though they speak things credible, and trust
friends, even though they relate things incredible; and I suppose by
enemies he meant vicious men and foolish, and by friends, wise and good
men. Then, brother Gorgias, quoth Periander, I pray relate the whole
story particularly.

18. Gorgias in obedience to his brother’s command began his story thus:—

When we had fasted now for three days and offered sacrifice upon each
of those days, we were all resolved to sit up the third night and
spend it in pastime and dancing. The moon shone very bright upon the
water, and the sea was exceeding calm and still; this we saw, for we
sported ourselves upon the shore. Being thus taken up, all of a sudden
we espied a wonderful spectacle off at sea, making with incredible
expedition to the adjoining promontory. The violence of the motion made
the sea foam again, and the noise was so loud, that the whole company
forsook their sport and ran together toward the place, admiring what
the matter should be. Before we could make a full discovery of the
whole, the motion was so rapid, we perceived divers dolphins, some
swimming in a ring or circle, others hastening amain to that part of
the shore which was most smooth, and others following after and (as it
were) bringing up the rear. In the middle there was a certain heap
which we could perceive above the water; but we could not distinctly
apprehend what it was, till drawing near the shore we saw all the
dolphins flocking together, and having made near the land they safely
surrendered their charge, and left out of danger a man breathing and
shaking himself. They returned to the promontory, and there seemed
to rejoice more than before for this their fortunate undertaking.
Divers in the company were affrighted and ran away; myself and a few
more took courage, and went on to see and satisfy ourselves what this
unusual matter might be; there we found and instantly knew our old
acquaintance Arion the musician, who told us his name. He wore that
very garment he used when he strove for mastery. We brought him into
our tent and found he had received no damage in his passage, save only
a little lassitude by the violence of the motion. He told us the whole
story of his adventure,—a story incredible to all but such as saw
it with their eyes. He told us how, when he had determined to leave
Italy, being hastened away by Periander’s letters, he went aboard a
Corinthian merchantman then in port and ready to sail; being off at
sea with the winds favorable, he observed the seamen bent to ruin him,
and the master of the vessel told him as much, and that they purposed
to execute their design upon him that very night. In this distress,
the poor man (as if inspired by his good Genius) girds about him his
heretofore victorious, now his funeral cloak, with a brave resolution
to compose and sing his own epitaph, as the swans when they apprehend
the approaches of death are reported to do. Being thus habited, he
told the seamen he was minded to commit the protection of himself and
his fellow-passengers to the providence of the Gods in a Pythian song;
then standing upon the poop near the side of the vessel, and having
invoked the help and assistance of all the sea Gods, he strikes up
briskly and sings to his harp. Before he had half finished his carol,
the sun set, and he could discern Peloponnesus before him. The seamen
thought it tedious to tarry for the night, wherefore they resolved to
murder him immediately, to which purpose they unsheathed their swords.
Seeing this, and beholding the master standing with his face covered,
he leaped into the sea as far as he could; but before his body sunk he
found himself supported by dolphins. At first he was surprised with
care and trouble; but by and by, finding himself marching forward
with much ease and security, and observing a whole shoal of dolphins
flocking about him and joyfully contending which should appear most
forward and serviceable in his preservation, and discerning the vessel
at a considerable distance behind, he apprehended the nimbleness of
his porters; then, and not till then, his fears forsook him, and he
professed he was neither so fearful of death nor desirous of life as
he was full of ambitious desire to reach the haven of safety, that
he might show to all men that he stood in the grace and favor of the
Gods, and that he might himself believe more firmly than ever before
in their being and goodness. In his passage, as he lifted up his eyes
toward heaven, and beheld the stars glittering and twinkling and the
moon full and glorious, and the sea calm all about her as she seemed
to rise out of it, and yielding him (as it were) a beaten track; he
declared, he thought God’s justice had more eyes than one, and that
with these many eyes the Gods beheld what was acted here below both by
sea and land. With such contemplations he performed his voyage less
anxiously, which much abated the tediousness thereof and was a comfort
and refreshment to him in his solitude and danger. At last, arriving
near the promontory which was both steep and high, and fearing danger
in a straight course and direct line, they unanimously veered about,
and making to shore with a little compass for security, they delivered
Arion to us in safety, so that he plainly perceived and with thanks
acknowledged a Providence.

When Arion had finished this narrative of his escape, I asked him
(quoth Gorgias) whither the ship was bound; he told me for Corinth,
but it would not be there very suddenly, for when he leaped out of the
ship and was carried (as he conceived) about five hundred furlongs, he
perceived a calm, which must needs much retard their arrival who were
aboard. Gorgias added that, having learned the names of the pilot and
master and the colors of the ship, he immediately despatched out ships
and soldiers to examine all the ports, all this while keeping Arion
concealed, lest the criminals should upon notice of his deliverance
escape the pursuit of justice. This action happened very luckily, as if
it were directed by the power of the Gods; for as soon as he arrived at
Corinth, news was brought him that the same ship was in port, and that
his party had seized it and secured all the men, merchants and others.
Whereupon Periander commended Gorgias’s discretion and zeal, desiring
him to proceed and lose no time, but immediately to clap them in close
prison, and to suffer none to come at them to give the least notice of
Arion’s miraculous escape.

19. Gentlemen, quoth Esop, I remember you derided my dialogue of the
daws and crows; and now you can admire and believe as improbable a
story of dolphins. You are mightily out, said I, for this is no new
story which we believe, but it is recorded in the annals of Ino and
Athamas above a thousand years ago. These passages are supernatural,
quoth Solon, and much above our reason; what befell Hesiod is of a
lower kind, and more proper for our discourse, and if you have not
heard of it before, it is worth your hearing.

Hesiod was once entertained at the same house in Locris with a certain
Milesian. In this his sojourning time it happened the gentleman’s
daughter was got with child by the Milesian; which being discovered,
the whole family concluded Hesiod, if not guilty, must be privy to the
fact. His innocence was but a weak fence against their jealousy and
aspersions; and therefore, rashly censuring him guilty, the brothers
of the woman waylaid him in his return home, and slew him and his
companion Troilus near the temple of Nemean Jove in Locris. Their
carcasses they threw into the sea; that of Troilus was carried into the
river Daphnus, and rested upon a certain rock compassed with waters,
just above the surface of the sea, which rock bears his name to this
day. The body of Hesiod was no sooner fallen upon the surface of the
water, but a company of dolphins received it, and conveyed it to Rhium
and Molycria. It happened the Locrians were assembled at Rhium that
day to feast and make merry, according to the custom which continues
still among them. As soon as they perceived a carcass floating or
rather swimming towards them, they hastened, not without admiration, to
see what it was; and knowing the body to be Hesiod’s, they instantly
resolved to find out the murderers. It proved an easy discovery. After
conviction they threw them headlong alive into the sea, and ordered
their houses to be demolished to the very foundations. The body they
buried in the grove of the temple of Jove, that no foreigner might find
it out; the reason of this act was that the Orchomenians had searched
far and near for it at the instigation of the oracle, who promised them
the greatest felicity if they could get the bones of Hesiod and bury
them in their city. Now if dolphins are so favorable to dead men, it is
very probable they have a strong affection for the living, especially
for such as delight in music, whether vocal or instrumental. And this
we know undoubtedly, that these creatures delight infinitely in music;
they love it, and if any man sings or plays as he sails along in fair
weather, they will quietly swim by the side of the ship, and listen
till the music is ended. When children bathe in the water and sport
themselves, you shall have a parcel of them flock together and sport
and swim by them; and they may do it the more securely, since it is a
breach of the law of Nature to hurt them. You never heard of any man
that fishes for them purposely or hurts them wilfully, unless falling
into the nets they spoil the sport, and so, like naughty children, are
corrected for their misdemeanors. I very well remember the Lesbians
told me how a maid of their town was preserved from drowning by them.

20. It was a very true story, quoth Pittacus, and there are divers
still alive who will attest it, if need be. The builders or founders
of Lesbos were commanded by the oracle to sail till they came to a
haven called Mesogaeum, there they should sacrifice a bull to Neptune,
and for the honor of Amphitrite and the sea-nymphs they should offer a
virgin. The principal persons in this colony were seven in number; the
eighth was one Echelaus by name, and appointed head of the rest by the
oracle himself; and he was a bachelor. A daughter of one of these seven
was to be sacrificed, but who it should be was to be decided by lot,
and the lot fell upon Smintheus’s sister. Her they dressed most richly,
and so apparelled they conveyed her in abundance of state to the
water-side, and having composed a prayer for her, they were now ready
to throw her overboard. There was in the company a certain ingenuous
young gentleman whose name was Enalus; he was desperately in love with
this young lady, and his love prompted him to endeavor all he could for
her preservation, or at least to perish in the attempt. In the very
moment she was to be cast away, he clasps her in his arms and throws
himself and her together into the sea. Shortly after there was a flying
report they were both conveyed safe to land. A while after Enalus was
seen at Lesbos, who gave out they were preserved by dolphins. I could
tell you stories more incredible than these, such as would amuse some
and please others; but it is impossible to command men’s faith. The sea
was so tempestuous and rough, the people were afraid to come too near
the waters, when Enalus arrived. A number of polypuses followed him
even to Neptune’s temple, the biggest and strongest of which carried a
great stone. This Enalus dedicated, and this stone is therefore called
Enalus to this day. To be short and to speak all in a few words,—he
that knows how to distinguish between the impossible and the unusual,
to make a difference between the unlikely and the absurd, to be neither
too credulous nor too distrustful,—he hath learned your lesson, Do not
overdo.[7]

21. Anacharsis after all this discourse spake to this purpose: Since
Thales has asserted the being of a soul in all the principal and most
noble parts of the universe, it is no wonder that the most commendable
acts are governed by an over-ruling Power; for, as the body is the
organ of the soul, so the soul is an instrument in the hand of God.
Now as the body has many motions of its own proceeding from itself,
but the best and most from the soul, so the soul acts some things by
its own power, but in most things it is subordinate to the will and
power of God, whose glorious instrument it is. To me it seems highly
unreasonable—and I should be but too apt to censure the wisdom of the
Gods, if I were convinced—that they use fire, and water, and wind, and
clouds, and rain for the preservation and welfare of some and for the
detriment and destruction of others, while at the same time they make
no use of living creatures that are doubtless more serviceable to their
ends than bows are to the Scythians or harps or pipes to the Greeks.

Chersias the poet broke off this discourse, and told the company of
divers that were miraculously preserved to his certain knowledge, and
more particularly of Cypselus, Periander’s father, who being newly
born, his adversary sent a party of bloody fellows to murder him. They
found the child in his nurse’s arms, and seeing him smile innocently
upon them, they had not the heart to hurt him, and so departed; but
presently recalling themselves and considering the peremptoriness of
their orders, they returned and searched for him, but could not find
him, for his mother had hid him very carefully in a chest.[8] When
he came to years of discretion, and understood the greatness of his
former danger and deliverance, he consecrated a chapel at Delphi to
Apollo, by whose care he conceived himself preserved from crying in
that critical time, and by his cries from betraying his own life.
Pittacus, addressing his discourse to Periander, said: It is well done
of Chersias to make mention of that chapel, for this brings to my
mind a question I several times purposed to ask you but still forgot,
namely,—To what intent all those frogs were carved upon the palm-tree
before the door, and how they affect either the Deity or the dedicator?
Periander remitted him to Chersias for answer, as a person better
versed in these matters, for he was present when Cypselus consecrated
the chapel. But Chersias smiling would not satisfy them, until they
resolved him the meaning of these aphorisms; “Do not overdo,” “Know
thyself,” but particularly and principally this,—which had scared
divers from wedlock and others from suretyship and others from speaking
at all,—“Promise, and you are ruined.” What need we to explain to you
these, when you yourself have so mightily magnified Esop’s comment
upon each of them. Esop replied: When Chersias is disposed to jest
with me upon these subjects, and to jest in earnest, he is pleased to
father such sayings and sentences upon Homer, who, bringing in Hector
furiously flying upon others, yet at another time represents him as
flying from Ajax son of Telamon,[9]—an argument that Hector knew
himself. And Homer made Ulysses approve the saying “Do not overdo,”
when he besought his friend Diomedes not to commend him too much nor
yet to censure him too much. And for suretyship he exposes it as a
matter unsafe, nay highly dangerous, saying that to be bound for
idle and wicked men is full of hazard.[10] To confirm this, Chersias
reported how Jupiter had thrown Ate headlong out of heaven, because she
was by when he made the promise about the birth of Hercules whereby he
was circumvented.

Here Solon interrupted: I am of this mind, that we now give ear to the
most wise Homer,—

But now the night extends her awful shade:
The Goddess parts you: be the night obeyed.[11]

If it please the company then, let us sacrifice to the Muses, to
Neptune, and to Amphitrite, and so bid each adieu for this night.

This was the conclusion of that meeting, my dear Nicarchus.

HOW A YOUNG MAN OUGHT TO HEAR POEMS.

1. It may be allowed to be a question fit for the determination of
those concerning whom Cato said, Their palates are more sensitive than
their hearts, whether that saying of Philoxenus the poet be true or no.
The most savory flesh is that which is no flesh, and fish that is no
fish. Yet this to me, Marcus Sedatus, is out of question, that those
precepts of philosophy which seem not to be delivered with a designed
gravity, such as becomes philosophers, take most with persons that are
very young, and meet with a more ready acceptance and compliance from
them. Whence it is that they do not only read through Esop’s fables
and the fictions of poets and the Abaris of Heraclides and Ariston’s
Lyco; but they also read such doctrines as relate to the souls of men,
if something fabulous be mixed with them, with an excess of pleasure
that borders on enthusiasm. Wherefore we are not only to govern their
appetites in the delights of eating and drinking, but also (and much
more) to inure them to a like temperance in reading and hearing, that,
while they make use of pleasure as a sauce, they may pursue that which
is wholesome and profitable in those things which they read. For
neither can a city be secure if but one gate be left open to receive
the enemy, though all the rest be shut; nor a young man safe, though he
be sufficiently fortified against the assaults of all other pleasures,
whilst he is without any guard against those of the ear. Yea, the
nearer the commerce is betwixt the delights of that sense and those
of the mind and reason, by so much the more, when he lies open on that
side, is he apt to be debauched and corrupted thereby. Seeing therefore
we cannot (and perhaps would not if we could) debar young men of the
size of my Soclarus and thy Cleander altogether from the reading of
poets, yet let us keep the stricter guard upon them, as those who need
a guide to direct them in their reading more than in their walks. Upon
which consideration, I find myself disposed to send thee at present
in writing that discourse concerning Poetry which I had lately an
occasion to deliver by word of mouth; that, when thou hast read it over
thyself, thou mayst also make such use of it, if thou judgest it may be
serviceable to that purpose, as those which are engaged to drink hard
do of amethysts (or preservatives against drunkenness),—that is, that
thou mayst communicate it to Cleander, to prepossess him therewith;
seeing he is naturally endowed with a brisk, piercing, and daring wit,
and therefore more prone to be inveigled by that sort of study.

They say of the fish called polypus that

His head in one respect is very good,
But in another very naughty food;

because, though it be very luscious to eat, yet it is thought to
disturb the fancy with frightful and confused dreams. And the like
observation may be made concerning poetry, that it affords sweet and
withal wholesome nourishment to the minds of young men, but yet it
contains likewise no less matter of disturbance and emotion to them
that want a right conduct in the study thereof. For of it also, as well
as of Egypt, may it be said that (to those who will use it)

Its over-fertile and luxuriant field
Medicines and poisons intermixt doth yield;

for therein

Love with soft passions and rich language drest
Oft steals the heart out of th’ ingenuous breast.[12]

And indeed such only are endangered thereby, for the charms of that
art ordinarily affect not those that are downright sots and naturally
incapable of learning. Wherefore, when Simonides was asked why of all
men he could not deceive the Thessalians, his answer was, Because they
are not so well bred as to be capable of being cajoled by me. And
Gorgias used to call tragical poems cheats, wherein he that did cheat
was juster than he that did not cheat, and he that was cheated was
wiser than he that was not cheated.

It deserves therefore our consideration, whether we shall put young
men into Epicurus’s boat,—wherein, having their ears stopped with wax,
as those of the men of Ithaca were, they shall be obliged to sail by
and not so much as touch at poetry,—or rather keep a guard on them,
so as to oblige their judgments by principles of right reason to use
it aright, and preserve them from being seduced to their hurt by that
which affords them so much delight. For neither did Lycurgus, the
valiant son of Dryas (as Homer[13] calls him) act like a man of sound
reason in the course which he took to reform his people that were much
inclined to drunkenness, by travelling up and down to destroy all the
vines in the country; whereas he should have ordered that every vine
should have a well of water near it, that (as Plato saith) the drunken
deity might be reduced to temperance by a sober one. For water mixed
with wine takes away the hurtful spirits, while it leaves the useful
ones in it. Neither should we cut down or destroy the Muses’ vine,
poetry; but where we perceive it luxuriates and grows wild through
an ungoverned appetite of applause, there ought we to prune away or
keep under the fabulous and theatrical branches thereof; and where we
find any of the Graces linked to any of the Muses,—that is, where the
lusciousness and tempting charms of language are not altogether barren
and unprofitable,—there let us bring in philosophy to incorporate with
it.

For as, where the mandrake grows near the vine and so communicates
something of its force thereto, the wine that is made of its grapes
makes the sleep of those that drink it more refreshing; so doth the
tempering poetry with the principles of philosophy and allaying their
roughness with its fictions render the study of them more easy and
the relish of them more grateful to young learners. Wherefore those
that would give their minds to philosophical studies are not obliged
to avoid poetry altogether, but rather to prepare themselves for
philosophy by poems, accustoming themselves to search for and embrace
that which may profit in that which pleaseth them, and rejecting
and discarding that wherein they find nothing of this nature. For
this discrimination is the first step to learning; and when this is
attained, then, according to what Sophocles saith,—

To have begun well what we do intend
Gives hope and prospect of as good an end.

2. Let us therefore in the first place possess those whom we initiate
in the study of poetry with this notion (as one which they ought always
to have at hand), that

’Tis frequently the poet’s guise
To intermingle truth with lies;—

which they do sometimes with and sometimes against their wills. They
do it with their wills, because they find strict truth too rigid to
comply with that sweetness and gracefulness of expression, which most
are taken with, so readily as fiction doth. For real truth, though it
disgust never so much, must be told as it is, without alteration; but
that which is feigned in a discourse can easily yield and shift its
garb from the distasteful to that which is more pleasing. And indeed,
neither the measures nor the tropes nor the grandeur of words nor the
aptness of metaphors nor the harmony of the composition gives such
a degree of elegance and gracefulness to a poem as a well-ordered
and artificial fiction doth. But as in pictures the colors are more
delightful to the eye than the lines, because those give them a nearer
resemblance to the persons they were made for, and render them the
more apt to deceive the beholder; so in poems we are more apt to be
smitten and fall in love with a probable fiction than with the greatest
accuracy that can be observed in measures and phrases, where there is
nothing fabulous or fictitious joined with it. Wherefore Socrates,
being induced by some dreams to attempt something in poetry, and
finding himself unapt, by reason that he had all his lifetime been
the champion of severe truth, to hammer out of his own invention a
likely fiction, made choice of Esop’s fables to turn into verse; as
judging nothing to be true poetry that had in it nothing of falsehood.
For though we have known some sacrifices performed without pipes and
dances, yet we own no poetry which is utterly destitute of fable and
fiction. Whence the verses of Empedocles and Parmenides, the Theriaca
of Nicander, and the sentences of Theognis, are rather to be accounted
speeches than poems, which, that they might not walk contemptibly on
foot, have borrowed from poetry the chariot of verse, to convey them
the more creditably through the world. Whensoever therefore any thing
is spoken in poems by any noted and eminently famous man, concerning
Gods or Daemons or virtue, that is absurd or harsh, he that takes such
sayings for truths is thereby misled in his apprehension and corrupted
with an erroneous opinion. But he that constantly keeps in his mind and
maintains as his principle that the witchcraft of poetry consists in
fiction, he that can at all turns accost it in this language,—

Riddle of art! like which no sphinx beguiles;
Whose face on one side frowns while th’ other smiles!
Why cheat’st thou, with pretence to make us wise,
And bid’st sage precepts in a fool’s disguise?—

such a one, I say, will take no harm by it, nor admit from it any
absurd thing into his belief. But when he meets in poetry with
expressions of Neptune’s rending the earth to pieces and discovering
the infernal regions,[14] he will be able to check his fears of the
reality of any such accident; and he will rebuke himself for his anger
against Apollo for the chief commander of the Greeks,—

Whom at a banquet, whiles he sings his praise
And speaks him fair, yet treacherously he slays.[15]

Yea, he will repress his tears for Achilles and Agamemnon, while
they are represented as mourning after their death, and stretching
forth their limber and feeble hands to express their desire to live
again. And if at any time the charms of poetry transport him into any
disquieting passions, he will quickly say to himself, as Homer very
elegantly (considering the propension of women to listen after fables)
says in his Necyia, or relation of the state of the dead,—

But from the dark dominions speed thy way,
And climb the steep ascent to upper day;
To thy chaste bride the wondrous story tell,
The woes, the horrors, and the laws of hell.[16]

Such things as I have touched upon are those which the poets willingly
feign. But more there are which they do not feign, but believing them
themselves as their own proper judgments, they put fictitious colors
upon them to ingratiate them to us. As when Homer says of Jupiter,—

Jove lifts the golden balances, that show
The fates of mortal men, and things below.
Here each contending hero’s lot he tries,
And weighs with equal hand their destinies.
Low sinks the scale surcharged with Hector’s fate;
Heavy with death it sinks, and hell receives the weight.[17]

To this fable Aeschylus hath accommodated a whole tragedy which he
calls Psychostasia, wherein he introduceth Thetis and Aurora standing
by Jupiter’s balances, and deprecating each of them the death of her
son engaged in a duel. Now there is no man but sees that this fable
is a creature of the poet’s fancy, designed to delight or scare the
reader. But this other passage,—

Great Jove is made the treasurer of wars;[18]

and this other also,—

When a God means a noble house to raze,
He frames one rather than he’ll want a cause:[19]

these passages, I say, express the judgment and belief of poets
who thereby discover and suggest to us the ignorant or mistaken
apprehensions they had of the Deities. Moreover, almost every one
knows nowadays, that the portentous fancies and contrivances of
stories concerning the state of the dead are accommodated to popular
apprehensions,—that the spectres and phantasms of burning rivers and
horrid regions and terrible tortures expressed by frightful names are
all mixed with fable and fiction, as poison with food; and that neither
Homer nor Pindar nor Sophocles ever believed themselves when they wrote
at this rate:—

There endless floods of shady darkness stream
From the vast caves, where mother Night doth teem;

and,

There ghosts o’er the vast ocean’s waves did glide,
By the Leucadian promontory’s side;[20]

and,

There from th’ unfathomed gulf th’ infernal lake
Through narrow straits recurring tides doth make.

And yet, as many of them as deplore death as a lamentable thing, or the
want of burial after death as a calamitous condition, are wont to break
out into expressions of this nature:—

O pass not by, my friend; nor leave me here
Without a grave, and on that grave a tear;[21]

and,

Then to the ghosts the mournful soul did fly,
Sore grieved in midst of youth and strength to die;[22]

and again,

’Tis sweet to see the light. O spare me then,
Till I arrive at th’ usual age of men:
Nor force my unfledged soul from hence, to know
The doleful state of dismal shades below.[23]

These, I say, are the speeches of men persuaded of these things, as
being possessed by erroneous opinions; and therefore they touch us the
more nearly and torment us inwardly, because we ourselves are full of
the same impotent passion from which they were uttered. To fortify
us therefore against expressions of this nature, let this principle
continually ring in our ears, that poetry is not at all solicitous to
keep to the strict measure of truth. And indeed, as to what that truth
in these matters is, even those men themselves who make it their only
study to learn and search it out confess that they can hardly discover
any certain footsteps to guide them in that enquiry. Let us therefore
have these verses of Empedocles, in this case, at hand:—

No sight of man’s so clear, no ear so quick,
No mind so piercing, that’s not here to seek;

as also those of Xenophanes:—

The truth about the Gods and world, no man
E’er was or shall be that determine can;

and lastly, that passage concerning Socrates, in Plato, where he by the
solemnity of an oath disclaims all knowledge of those things. For those
who perceive that the searching into such matters makes the heads of
philosophers themselves giddy cannot but be the less inclined to regard
what poets say concerning them.

3. And we shall fix our young man yet the more if, when we enter him
in the poets, we first describe poetry to him, and tell him that it
is an imitating art and doth in many respects correspond to painting;
not only acquainting him with that common saying, that poetry is vocal
painting and painting silent poetry, but teaching him, moreover,
that when we see a lizard or an ape or the face of a Thersites in a
picture, we are surprised with pleasure and wonder at it, not because
of any beauty in the things, but for the likeness of the draught. For
it is repugnant to the nature of that which is itself foul to be at
the same time fair; and therefore it is the imitation—be the thing
imitated beautiful or ugly—that, in case it do express it to the life,
is commended; and on the contrary, if the imitation make a foul thing
to appear fair, it is dispraised because it observes not decency and
likeness. Now some painters there are that paint uncomely actions; as
Timotheus drew Medea killing her children; Theon, Orestes murdering
his mother; and Parrhasius, Ulysses counterfeiting madness; yea,
Chaerephanes expressed in picture the unchaste converse of women with
men. Now in such cases a young man is to be familiarly acquainted with
this notion, that, when men praise such pictures, they praise not the
actions represented but only the painter’s art, which doth so lively
express what was designed in them. Wherefore, in like manner, seeing
poetry many times describes by imitation foul actions and unseemly
passions and manners, the young student must not in such descriptions
(although performed never so artificially and commendably) believe
all that is said as true or embrace it as good, but give its due
commendation so far only as it suits the subject treated of. For as,
when we hear the grunting of hogs and the shrieking of pulleys and the
rustling of wind and the roaring of seas, we are, it may be, disturbed
and displeased, and yet when we hear any one imitating these or the
like noises handsomely (as Parmenio did that of an hog, and Theodorus
that of a pulley), we are well pleased; and as we avoid (as an
unpleasing spectacle) the sight of sick persons and of a lazar full of
ulcers, and yet are delighted to be spectators of the Philoctetes of
Aristophon and the Jocasta of Silanion, wherein such wasting and dying
persons are well acted; so must the young scholar, when he reads in a
poem of Thersites the buffoon or Sisyphus the whoremaster or Batrachus
the bawd speaking or doing any thing, so praise the artificial managery
of the poet, adapting the expressions to the persons, as withal to look
on the discourses and actions so expressed as odious and abominable.
For the goodness of things themselves differs much from the goodness
of the imitation of them; the goodness of the latter consisting only
in propriety and aptness to represent the former. Whence to foul
actions foul expressions are most suitable and proper. As the shoes
of Demonides the cripple (which, when he had lost them, he wished
might suit the feet of him that stole them) were but unhandsome shoes,
but yet fit for the man they were made for; so we may say of such
expressions as these:—

’Tis worth the while an unjust act to own,
When it sets him that does it on a throne;[24]

Get the repute of Just for a disguise,
And in it do all things whence gain may rise,

A talent dowry! Could I close my eyes
In sleep, or live, if thee I should despise?
And should I not in hell tormented be,
Could I be guilty of profaning thee?[25]

These, it is true, are wicked as well as false speeches, but yet are
decent enough in the mouth of an Eteocles, an Ixion, and an old griping
usurer. If therefore we mind our children that the poets write not
such things as praising and approving them, but do really account
them base and vicious and therefore accommodate such speeches to
base and vicious persons, they will never be damnified by them from
the esteem they have of the poets in whom they meet with them. But,
on the contrary, the suspicions insinuated into them of the persons
will render the words and actions ascribed to them suspected for evil,
because proceeding from such evil men. And of this nature is Homer’s
representation of Paris, when he describes him running out of the
battle into Helen’s bed. For in that he attributes no such indecent act
to any other, but only to that incontinent and adulterous person, he
evidently declares that he intends that relation to import a disgrace
and reproach to such intemperance.

4. In such passages therefore we are carefully to observe whether or
not the poet himself do anywhere give any intimation that he dislikes
the things he makes such persons say; which, in the prologue to his
Thais Menander does, in these words:—

Therefore, my Muse, describe me now a whore,
Fair, bold, and furnished with a nimble tongue;
One that ne’er scruples to do lovers wrong;
That always craves, and denied shuts her door;
That truly loves no man, yet, for her ends,
Affection true to every man pretends.

But Homer of all the poets does it best. For he doth beforehand, as it
were, bespeak dislike of the evil things and approbation of the good
things he utters. Of the latter take these instances:—

He readily did the occasion take,
And sweet and comfortable words he spake;[26]

By him he stood, and with soft speeches quelled
The wrath which in his heated bosom swelled.[27]

And for the former, he so performs it as in a manner solemnly to forbid
us to use or heed such speeches as those he mentions, as being foolish
and wicked. For example, being to tell us how uncivilly Agamemnon
treated the priest, he premises these words of his own,—

Not so Atrides: he with kingly pride
Repulsed the sacred sire, and thus replied;[28]

intimating the insolency and unbecomingness of his answer. And when he
attributes this passionate speech to Achilles,—

O monster, mix’d of insolence and fear,
Thou dog in forehead, and in heart a deer![29]

he accompanies it with this censure,—

Nor yet the rage his boiling breast forsook,
Which thus redoubling on Atrides broke;[30]

for it was unlikely that speaking in such anger he should observe any
rules of decency.

And he passeth like censures on actions. As on Achilles’s foul usage of
Hector’s carcass,—

Gloomy he said, and (horrible to view)
Before the bier the bleeding Hector threw.[31]

And in like manner he doth very decently shut up relations of things
said or done, by adding some sentence wherein he declares his judgment
of them. As when he personates some of the Gods saying, on the occasion
of the adultery of Mars and Venus discovered by Vulcan’s artifice,—

See the swift God o’ertaken by the lame!
Thus ill acts prosper not, but end in shame.[32]

And thus concerning Hecter’s insolent boasting he says,—

With such big words his mind proud Hector eased,
But venerable Juno he displeased.[33]

And when he speaks of Pandarus’s shooting, he adds,—

He heard, and madly at the motion pleased,
His polish’d bow with hasty rashness seized.[34]

Now these verbal intimations of the minds and judgments of poets are
not difficult to be understood by any one that will heedfully observe
them. But besides these, they give us other hints from actions. As
Euripides is reported, when some blamed him for bringing such an
impious and flagitious villain as Ixion upon the stage, to have given
this answer: But yet I brought him not off till I had fastened him to
a torturing wheel. This same way of teaching by mute actions is to be
found in Homer also, affording us useful contemplations upon those very
fables which are usually most disliked in him. These some men offer
force to, that they may reduce them to allegories (which the ancients
called ὑπόνοιαι), and tell us that Venus committing adultery with Mars,
discovered by the Sun, is to be understood thus: that when the star
called Venus is in conjunction with that which hath the name of Mars,
bastardly births are produced, and by the Sun’s rising and discovering
them they are not concealed. So will they have Juno’s dressing herself
so accurately to tempt Jupiter, and her making use of the girdle of
Venus to inflame his love, to be nothing else but the purification of
that part of the air which draweth nearest to the nature of fire. As
if we were not told the meaning of those fables far better by the poet
himself. For he teacheth us in that of Venus, if we heed it, that light
music and wanton songs and discourses which suggest to men obscene
fancies debauch their manners, and incline them to an unmanly way of
living in luxury and wantonness, of continually haunting the company of
women, and of being

Given to fashions, that their garb may please,
Hot baths, and couches where they loll at ease.

And therefore also he brings in Ulysses directing the musician thus,—

Leave this, and sing the horse, out of whose womb
The gallant knights that conquered Troy did come;[35]

evidently teaching us that poets and musicians ought to receive the
arguments of their songs from sober and understanding men. And in the
other fable of Juno he excellently shows that the conversation of women
with men, and the favors they receive from them procured by sorcery,
witchcraft, or other unlawful arts, are not only short, unstable, and
soon cloying, but also in the issue easily turned to loathing and
displeasure, when once the pleasure is over. For so Jupiter there
threatens Juno, when he tells her,—

Hear this, remember, and our fury dread,
Nor pull the unwilling vengeance on thy head;
Lest arts and blandishments successless prove
Thy soft deceits and well dissembled love.[36]

For the fiction and representation of evil acts, when it withal
acquaints us with the shame and damage befalling the doers, hurts not
but rather profits him that reads them. For which end philosophers
make use of examples for our instruction and correction out of
historical collections; and poets do the very same thing, but with this
difference, that they invent fabulous examples themselves. There was
one Melanthius, who (whether in jest or earnest he said it, it matters
not much) affirmed that the city of Athens owed its preservation to
the dissensions and factions that were among the orators, giving
withal this reason for his assertion, that thereby they were kept from
inclining all of them to one side, so that by means of the differences
among those statesmen there were always some that drew the saw the
right way for the defeating of destructive counsels. And thus it is
too in the contradictions among poets, which, by lessening the credit
of what they say, render them the less powerful to do mischief; and
therefore, when comparing one saying with another we discover their
contrariety, we ought to adhere to the better side. As in these
instances:—

The Gods, my son, deceive poor men oft-times.
_Ans._ ’Tis easy, sir, on God to lay our crimes.

’Tis comfort to thee to be rich, is’t not!
_Ans._ No, sir, ’tis bad to be a wealthy sot.

Die rather than such toilsome pains to take.
_Ans._ To call God’s service toil’s a foul mistake.

Such contrarieties as these are easily solved, if (as I said) we teach
youth to judge aright and to give the better saying preference. But if
we chance to meet with any absurd passages without any others at their
heels to confute them, we are then to overthrow them with such others
as elsewhere are to be found in the author. Nor must we be offended
with the poet or grieved at him, but only at the speeches themselves,
which he utters either according to the vulgar manner of speaking or,
it may be, but in drollery. So, when thou readest in Homer of Gods
thrown out of heaven headlong one by another, or Gods wounded by men
and quarrelling and brawling with each other, thou mayest readily, if
thou wilt, say to him,—

Sure thy invention here was sorely out,
Or thou hadst said far better things, no doubt;[37]

yea, and thou dost so elsewhere, and according as thou thinkest, to
wit, in these passages of thine:—

The Gods, removed from all that men doth grieve,
A quiet and contented life do live.

Herein the immortal Gods for ever blest
Feel endless joys and undisturbed rest.

The Gods, who have themselves no cause to grieve,
For wretched man a web of sorrow weave.[38]

For these argue sound and true opinions of the Gods; but those other
were only feigned to raise passions in men. Again, when Euripides
speaks at this rate,—

The Gods are better than we men by far,
And yet by them we oft deceived are,—

we may do well to quote him elsewhere against himself, where he says
better,—

If Gods do wrong, surely no Gods there are.

So also, when Pindar saith bitterly and keenly,

No law forbids us any thing to do,
Whereby a mischief may befall a foe,

tell him: But, Pindar, thou thyself sayest elsewhere,

The pleasure which injurious acts attends
Always in bitter consequences ends.

And when Sophocles speaks thus,

Sweet is the gain, wherein to lie and cheat
Adds the repute of wit to what we get,

tell him: But we have heard thee say far otherwise,

When the account’s cast up, the gain’s but poor
Which by a lying tongue augments the store.

And as to what he saith of riches, to wit

Wealth, where it minds to go, meets with no stay;
For where it finds not, it can make a way;
Many fair offers doth the poor let go,
And lose his prize because his purse is low;
The fair tongue makes, where wealth can purchase it,
The foul face beautiful, the fool a wit:—

here the reader may set in opposition divers other sayings of the same
author. For example,

From honor poverty doth not debar,
Where poor men virtuous and deserving are.

Whate’er fools think, a man is ne’er the worse
If he be wise, though with an empty purse

The comfort which he gets who wealth enjoys,
The vexing care by which ’tis kept destroys.

And Menander also somewhere magnifies a voluptuous life, and inflames
the minds of vain persons with these amorous strains,

The glorious sun no living thing doth see,
But what’s a slave to love as well as we.

But yet elsewhere, on the other side, he fastens on us and pulls us
back to the love of virtue, and checks the rage of lust, when he says
thus,

The life that is dishonorably spent,
Be it ne’er so pleasant, yields no true content.

For these lines are contrary to the former, as they are also better and
more profitable; so that by comparing them considerately one cannot but
either be inclined to the better side, or at least flag in the belief
of the worse.

But now, supposing that any of the poets themselves afford no such
correcting passages to solve what they have said amiss, it will then be
advisable to confront them with the contrary sayings of other famous
men, and therewith to sway the scales of our judgment to the better
side. As, when Alexis tempts to debauchery in these verses,

The wise man knows what of all things is best,
Whilst choosing pleasure he slights all the rest.
He thinks life’s joys complete in these three sorts,
To drink and eat, and follow wanton sports;
And what besides seems to pretend to pleasure,
If it betide him, counts it over measure,

we must remember that Socrates said the contrary, to wit: Bad men live
that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they
may live. And against the man that wrote in this manner,

He that designs to encounter with a knave,
An equal stock of knavery must have,

seeing he herein advises us to follow other vicious examples, that of
Diogenes may well be returned, who being asked by what means a man
might revenge himself upon his enemy, answered, By becoming himself a
good and honest man. And the same Diogenes may be quoted also against
Sophocles, who, writing thus of the sacred mysteries, caused great
grief and despair to multitudes of men:

Most happy they whose eyes are blest to see
The mysteries which here contained be,
Before they die! For only they have joy
In th’ other world; the rest all ills annoy.

This passage being read to Diogenes, What then! says he, shall the
condition of Pataecion, the notorious robber, after death be better
than that of Epaminondas, merely for his being initiated in these
mysteries? In like manner, when one Timotheus on the theatre, in the
praise of the Goddess Diana, called her furious, raging, possessed,
mad, Cinesias presently cried out to him aloud, May thy daughter,
Timotheus, be such a Goddess! And witty also was that of Bion to
Theognis, who said,—

One can not say nor do, if poor he be;
His tongue is bound to th’ peace, as well as he.[39]

How comes it to pass then, said he, Theognis, that thou thyself being
so poor pratest and gratest our ears in this manner?

5. Nor are we to omit in our reading those hints which, from some
other words or phrases bordering on those that offend us, may help to
rectify our apprehensions. But as physicians use cantharides, believing
that, though their bodies be deadly poison, yet their feet and wings
are medicinal and can even kill the poison of the flies themselves, so
must we deal with poems. If any noun or verb near at hand may assist to
the correction of any such saying, and preserve us from putting a bad
construction upon it, we should take hold of it and employ it to assist
a more favorable interpretation. As some do in reference to those
verses of Homer,—

Sorrows and tears most commonly are seen
To be the Gods’ rewards to wretched men:—

The Gods, who have no cause themselves to grieve,
For wretched man a web of sorrow weave.[40]

For, they say, he says not of men simply, or of all men, that the Gods
weave for them the fatal web of a sorrowful life; but he affirms it
only of foolish and imprudent men, whom, because their vices make them
such, he therefore calls wretched and miserable.

6. Another way whereby those passages which are suspicious in poets
may be transferred to a better sense may be taken from the common
use of words, which a young man ought indeed to be more exercised in
than in the use of strange and obscure terms. For it will be a point
of philology which it will not be unpleasant to him to understand,
that when he meets with ῥιγεδανή in a poet, that word signifies an
_evil death_; for the Macedonians use the word δάνος to signify
_death_. So the Aeolians call victory gotten by patient endurance
of hardships καμμονίη; and the Dryopians call daemons πόποι.

But of all things it is most necessary, and no less profitable if
we design to receive profit and not hurt from the poets, that we
understand how they make use of the names of Gods, as also of the terms
of Evil and Good; and what they mean by Fortune and Fate; and whether
these words be always taken by them in one and the same sense or rather
in various senses, as also many other words are. For so the word οἶκος
sometimes signifies a _material house_, as, Into the high-roofed
house; and sometimes _estate_, as, My house is devoured. So
the word βίοτος sometimes signifies _life_, and sometimes
_wealth_. And ἀλύειν is sometimes taken for being _uneasy_
and _disquieted in mind_, as in

Ὡς ἔφαθ’· ἡ δ’ ~ἀλύουσ~’ ἀπεβήσατο,
τείρετο δ’ αἰνῶς,[41]

and elsewhere for boasting and rejoicing, as in

Ἢ ~ἀλύεις~, ὅτι Ἶρον ἐνίκησας τὸν ἀλήτην.[42]

In like manner θοάζειν signifies either _to move_, as in Euripides
when he saith,

Κῆτος ~θοάζον~ ἐκ Ἀτλαντικῆς ἁλός,—

or _to sit_, as in Sophocles when he writes thus,

Τίνας πόθ’ ἕδρας τάσδε μοι ~θοάζετε~,
Ἱκτηρίοις κλάδοισιν ἐξεστεμμένοι.[43]

It is elegant also when they adapt to the present matter, as
grammarians teach, the use of words which are commonly of another
signification. As here:—

Νῆ’ ὀλίγην αἰνεῖν, μεγάλῃ δ’ ἐνὶ φορτία θέσθαι.

For here αἰνεῖν signifies _to praise_ (instead of ἐπαινεῖν), and
_to praise_ is used for _to refuse_. So in conversation it
is common with us to say, καλῶς ἔχει, _it is well_ (i.e., _No,
I thank you_), and to bid any thing _fare well_ (χαίρειν);
by which forms of speech we refuse a thing which we do not want, or
receive it not, but still with a civil compliment. So also some say
that Proserpina is called ἐπαινή in the notion of παραιτητή, _to be
deprecated_, because death is by all men shunned.

And the like distinction of words we ought to observe also in things
more weighty and serious. To begin with the Gods, we should teach our
youth that poets, when they use the names of Gods, sometimes mean
properly the Divine Beings so called, but otherwhiles understand
by those names certain powers of which the Gods are the donors and
authors, they having first led us into the use of them by their own
practice. As when Archilochus prays,

King Vulcan, hear thy suppliant, and grant
That which thou’rt wont to give and I to want,

it is plain that he means the God himself whom he invokes. But when
elsewhere he bewails the drowning of his sister’s husband, who had not
obtained lawful burial, and says,

Had Vulcan his fair limbs to ashes turned,
I for his loss had with less passion mourned,

he gives the name of Vulcan to the fire and not to the Deity. Again,
Euripides, when he says,

No; by great Jove I swear, enthroned on high,
And bloody Mars,[44]

means the Gods themselves who bare those names. But when Sophocles
saith,

Blind Mars doth mortal men’s affairs confound,
As the swine’s snout doth quite deface the ground,

we are to understand the word Mars to denote not the God so called, but
war. And by the same word we are to understand also weapons made of
hardened brass, in those verses of Homer,

These are the gallant men whose noble blood
Keen Mars did shed near swift Scamander’s flood.[45]

Wherefore, in conformity to the instances given, we must conceive and
bear in mind that by the names of Jupiter also sometimes they mean the
God himself, sometimes Fortune, and oftentimes also Fate. For when they
say,—

Great Jupiter, who from the lofty hill
Of Ida govern’st all the world at will;[46]

That wrath which hurled to Pluto’s gloomy realm
The souls of mighty chiefs:—
Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove;[47]

For who (but who himself too fondly loves)
Dares lay his wisdom in the scale with Jove’s?—

they understand Jupiter himself. But when they ascribe the event of all
things done to Jupiter as the cause, saying of him,—

Many brave souls to hell Achilles sent,
And Jove’s design accomplished in th’ event,—

they mean by Jove no more but Fate. For the poet doth not conceive that
God contrives mischief against mankind, but he soundly declares the
mere necessity of the things themselves, to wit, that prosperity and
victory are destined by Fate to cities and armies and commanders who
govern themselves with sobriety, but if they give way to passions and
commit errors, thereby dividing and crumbling themselves into factions,
as those of whom the poet speaks did, they do unhandsome actions,
and thereby create great disturbances, such as are attended with sad
consequences.

For to all unadvised acts, in fine,
The Fates unhappy issues do assign.[48]

But when Hesiod brings in Prometheus thus counselling his brother
Epimetheus,

Brother, if Jove to thee a present make,
Take heed that from his hands thou nothing take,[49]

he useth the name of Jove to express Fortune; for he calls the good
things which come by her (such as riches, and marriages, and empires,
and indeed all external things the enjoyment whereof is unprofitable
to them who know not how to use them well) the gifts of Jove. And
therefore he adviseth Epimetheus (an ill man, and a fool withal) to
stand in fear of and to guard himself from prosperity, as that which
would be hurtful and destructive to him.

Again, where he saith,

Reproach thou not a man for being poor;
His poverty’s God’s gift, as is thy store,[50]

he calls that which befalls men by Fortune God’s gift, and intimates
that it is an unworthy thing to reproach any man for that poverty which
he falls into by Fortune, whereas poverty is then only a matter of
disgrace and reproach when it is attendant on sloth and idleness, or
wantonness and prodigality. For, before the name of Fortune was used,
they knew there was a powerful cause, which moved irregularly and
unlimitedly and with such a force that no human reason could avoid it;
and this cause they called by the names of Gods. So we are wont to call
divers things and qualities and discourses, and even men themselves,
divine. And thus may we rectify many such sayings concerning Jupiter as
would otherwise seem very absurd. As these, for instance:—

Before Jove’s door two fatal hogsheads, filled
With human fortunes, good and bad luck yield:—

Of violated oaths Jove took no care,
But spitefully both parties crushed by war:—

To Greeks and Trojans both this was the rise
Of mischief, suitable to Jove’s device.[51]

These passages we are to interpret as spoken concerning Fortune or
Fate, of the causality of both which no account can be given by us,
nor do their effects fall under our power. But where any thing is said
of Jupiter that is suitable, rational, and probable, there we are to
conceive that the names of that God is used properly. As in these
instances:—

Through others’ ranks he conquering did range,
But shunned with Ajax any blows t’ exchange;
But Jove’s displeasure on him he had brought,
Had he with one so much his better fought.[52]

For though great matters are Jove’s special care,
Small things t’ inferior daemons trusted are

And other words there are which the poets remove and translate
from their proper sense by accommodation to various things, which
deserve also our serious notice. Such a one, for instance, is ἀρετή,
_virtue_. For because virtue does not only render men prudent,
just, and good, both in their words and deeds, but also oftentimes
purchaseth to them honor and power, therefore they call likewise these
by that name. So we are wont to call both the olive-tree and the fruit
ἐλαία, and the oak-tree and its acorn φηγός, communicating the name of
the one to the other. Therefore, when our young man reads in the poets
such passages as these,—

This law th’ immortal Gods to us have set,
That none arrive at virtue but by sweat;[53]

The adverse troops then did the Grecians stout
By their mere virtue profligate and rout;[54]

If now the Fates determined have our death,
To virtue we’ll consign our parting breath;—

let him presently conceive that these things are spoken of that most
excellent and divine habit in us which we understand to be no other
than right reason, or the highest attainment of the reasonable nature,
and most agreeable to the constitution thereof. And again, when he
reads this.

Of virtue Jupiter to one gives more,
And lessens, when he lifts, another’s store;

and this,

Virtue and honor upon wealth attend;[55]

let him not sit down in an astonishing admiration of rich men, as if
they were enabled by their wealth to purchase virtue, nor let him
imagine that it is in the power of Fortune to increase or lessen his
own wisdom; but let him conceive that the poet by virtue meant either
glory or power or prosperity or something of like import. For poets
use the same ambiguity also in the word κακότης, _evil_, which
sometimes in them properly signifies a wicked and malicious disposition
of mind, as in that of Hesiod,

Evil is soon acquired; for everywhere
There’s plenty on’t and t’all men’s dwellings near;[56]

and sometimes some evil accident or misfortune, as when Homer says,

Sore evils, when they haunt us in our prime,
Hasten old age on us before our time.[57]

So also in the word εὐδαιμονία, he would be sorely deceived who should
imagine that, wheresoever he meets with it in poets, it means (as it
does in philosophy) a perfect habitual enjoyment of all good things or
the leading a life every way agreeable to Nature, and that they do not
withal by the abuse of such words call rich men happy or blessed, and
power or glory felicity. For, though Homer rightly useth terms of that
nature in this passage,—

Though of such great estates I am possest,
Yet with true inward joy I am not blest;[58]

and Menander in this,—

So great’s th’ estate I am endowed withal.
All say I’m rich, but none me happy call;—

yet Euripides discourseth more confusedly and perplexedly when he
writes after this manner,—

May I ne’er live that grievous blessed life;—

But tell me, man, why valuest thou go high
Th’ unjust beatitude of tyranny?[59]

except, as I said, we allow him the use of these words in a
metaphorical and abusive sense. But enough hath been spoken of these
matters.

7. Nevertheless, this principle is not once only but often to be
inculcated and pressed on young men, that poetry, when it undertakes
a fictitious argument by way of imitation, though it make use of such
ornament and illustration as suit the actions and manners treated
of, yet disclaims not all likelihood of truth, seeing the force of
imitation, in order to the persuading of men, lies in probability.
Wherefore such imitation as does not altogether shake hands with truth
carries along with it certain signs of virtue and vice mixed together
in the actions which it doth represent. And of this nature is Homer’s
poetry, which totally bids adieu to Stoicism, the principles whereof
will not admit any vice to come near where virtue is, nor virtue to
have any thing to do where any vice lodgeth, but affirms that he that
is not a wise man can do nothing well, and he that is so can do nothing
amiss. Thus they determine in the schools. But in human actions and the
affairs of common life the judgment of Euripides is verified, that

Virtue and vice ne’er separately exist,
But in the same acts with each other twist.[60]

Next, it is to be observed that poetry, waiving the truth of things,
does most labor to beautify its fictions with variety and multiplicity
of contrivance. For variety bestows upon fable all that is pathetical,
unusual, and surprising, and thereby makes it more taking and graceful;
whereas what is void of variety is unsuitable to the nature of fable,
and so raiseth no passions at all. Upon which design of variety it
is, that the poets never represent the same persons always victorious
or prosperous or acting with the same constant tenor of virtue;—yea,
even the Gods themselves, when they engage in human actions, are not
represented as free from passions and errors;—lest, for the want of
some difficulties and cross passages, their poems should be destitute
of that briskness which is requisite to move and astonish the minds of
men.

8. These things therefore so standing, we should, when we enter a young
man into the study of the poets, endeavor to free his mind from that
degree of esteem of the good and great personages in them described
as may incline him to think them to be mirrors of wisdom and justice,
the chief of princes, and the exemplary measures of all virtue and
goodness. For he will receive much prejudice, if he shall approve and
admire all that comes from such persons as great, if he dislike nothing
in them himself, nor will endure to hear others blame them, though for
such words and actions as the following passages import:—

Oh! would to all the immortal powers above,
Apollo, Pallas, and almighty Jove!
That not one Trojan might be left alive,
And not a Greek of all the race survive.
Might only we the vast destruction shun,
And only we destroy the accursed town!

Her breast all gore, with lamentable cries,
The bleeding innocent Cassandra dies,
Murdered by Clytemnestra’s faithless hand:

Lie with thy father’s whore, my mother said,
That she th’ old man may loathe; and I obeyed.

Of all the Gods, O father Jove, there’s none
Thus given to mischief but thyself alone.[61]

Our young man is to be taught not to commend such things as these,
no, nor to show the nimbleness of his wit or subtlety in maintaining
an argument by finding out plausible colors and pretences to varnish
over a bad matter. But we should teach him rather to judge that
poetry is an imitation of the manners and lives of such men as are
not perfectly pure and unblamable, but such as are tinctured with
passions, misled by false opinions, and muffled with ignorance; though
oftentimes they may, by the help of a good natural temper, change them
for better qualities. For the young man’s mind, being thus prepared
and disposed, will receive no damage by such passages when he meets
with them in poems, but will on the one side be elevated with rapture
at those things which are well said or done, and on the other, will
not entertain but dislike those which are of a contrary character. But
he that admires and is transported with every thing, as having his
judgment enslaved by the esteem he hath for the names of heroes, will
be unawares wheedled into many evil things, and be guilty of the same
folly with those who imitate the crookedness of Plato or the lisping
of Aristotle. Neither must he carry himself timorously herein, nor,
like a superstitious person in a temple, tremblingly adore all he meets
with; but use himself to such confidence as may enable him openly to
pronounce, This was ill or incongruously said, and, That was bravely
and gallantly spoken. For example, Achilles in Homer, being offended at
the spinning out that war by delays, wherein he was desirous by feats
of arms to purchase to himself glory, calls the soldiers together when
there was an epidemical disease among them. But having himself some
smattering skill in physic, and perceiving after the ninth day, which
useth to be decretory in such cases, that the disease was no usual one
nor proceeding from ordinary causes, when he stands up to speak, he
waives applying himself to the soldiers, and addresseth himself as a
councillor to the general, thus:—

Why leave we not the fatal Trojan shore,
And measure back the seas we cross’d before?[62]

And he spake well, and with due moderation and decorum. But when the
soothsayer Chalcas had told him that he feared the wrath of the most
potent among the Grecians, after an oath that while he lived no man
should lay violent hands on him, he adds, but not with like wisdom and
moderation,

Not e’en the chief by whom our hosts are led,
The king of kings, shall touch that sacred head;

in which speech he declares his low opinion or rather his contempt of
his chief commander. And then, being farther provoked, he drew his
weapon with a design to kill him, which attempt was neither good nor
expedient. And therefore by and by he repented his rashness,—

He said, observant of the blue-eyed maid;
Then in the sheath returned the shining blade;

wherein again he did rightly and worthily, in that, though he could not
altogether quell his passion, yet he restrained and reduced it under
the command of reason, before it brake forth into such an irreparable
act of mischief. Again, even Agamemnon himself talks in that assembly
ridiculously, but carries himself more gravely and more like a prince
in the matter of Chryseis. For whereas Achilles, when his Briseis was
taken away from him,

In sullenness withdraws from all his friends,
And in his tent his time lamenting spends;

Agamemnon himself hands into the ship, delivers to her friends, and so
sends from him, the woman concerning whom a little before he declared
that he loved her better than his wife; and in that action did nothing
unbecoming or savoring of fond affection. Also Phoenix, when his father
bitterly cursed him for having to do with one that was his own harlot,
says,

Him in my rage I purposed to have killed,
But that my hand some God in kindness held;
And minded me that Greeks would taunting say,
Lo, here’s the man that did his father slay.

It is true that Aristarchus was afraid to permit these verses to stand
in the poet, and therefore censured them to be expunged. But they were
inserted by Homer very aptly to the occasion of Phoenix’s instructing
Achilles what a pernicious thing anger is, and what foul acts men do by
its instigation, while they are capable neither of making use of their
own reason nor of hearing the counsel of others. To which end he also
introduceth Meleager at first highly offended with his citizens, and
afterwards pacified; justly therein reprehending disordered passions,
and praising it as a good and profitable thing not to yield to them,
but to resist and overcome them, and to repent when one hath been
overcome by them.

Now in these instances the difference is manifest. But where a like
clear judgment cannot be passed, there we are to settle the young
man’s mind thus, by way of distinction. If Nausicaa, having cast her
eyes upon Ulysses, a stranger, and feeling the same passion for him as
Calypso had before, did (as one that was ripe for a husband) out of
wantonness talk with her maidens at this foolish rate,—

O Heaven! in my connubial hour decree
This man my spouse, or such a spouse as he![63]

she is blameworthy for her impudence and incontinence. But if,
perceiving the man’s breeding by his discourse, and admiring the
prudence of his addresses, she rather wisheth to have such a one for a
husband than a merchant or a dancing gallant of her fellow-citizens,
she is to be commended. And when Ulysses is represented as rejoicing
at Penelope’s jocular conversation with her wooers, and at their
presenting her with rich garments and other ornaments,

Because she cunningly the fools cajoled.
And bartered light words for their heavy gold;[64]

if that joy were occasioned by greediness and covetousness, he
discovers himself to be a more sordid prostituter of his own wife than
Poliager is wont to be represented on the stage to have been, of whom
it is said,—

Happy man he, whose wife, like Capricorn,
Stores him with riches from a golden horn!

But if through foresight he thought thereby to get them the more within
his power, as being lulled asleep in security for the future by the
hopes she gave them at present, this rejoicing, joined with confidence
in his wife, was rational. Again, when he is brought in numbering the
goods which the Phaeacians had set on shore together with himself and
departed; if indeed, being himself left in such a solitude, so ignorant
where he was, and having no security there for his own person, he is
yet solicitous for his goods, lest

The sly Phaeacians, when they stole to sea,
Had stolen some part of what they brought away;[65]

the covetousness of the man deserved in truth to be pitied, or
rather abhorred. But if, as some say in his defence, being doubtful
whether or no the place where he was landed were Ithaca, he made use
of the just tale of his goods to infer thence the honesty of the
Phaeacians,—because it was not likely they would expose him in a
strange place and leave him there with his goods by him untouched, so
as to get nothing by their dishonesty,—then he makes use of a very fit
test for this purpose, and deserves commendation for his wisdom in
that action. Some also there are who find fault with that passage of
the putting him on shore when he was asleep, if it really so happened,
and they tell us that the people of Tuscany have still a traditional
story among them concerning Ulysses, that he was naturally sleepy, and
therefore a man whom many men could not freely converse with. But if
his sleep was but feigned, and he made use of this pretence only of
a natural infirmity, by counterfeiting a nap, to hide the strait he
was in at that time in his thoughts, betwixt the shame of sending away
the Phaeacians without giving them a friendly collation and hospitable
gifts, and the fear he had of being discovered to his enemies by the
treating such a company of men together, they then approve it.

Now, by showing young men these things, we shall preserve them from
being carried away to any corruption in their manners, and dispose
them to the election and imitation of those that are good, as being
before instructed readily to disapprove those and commend these. But
this ought with the most care to be done in the reading of tragedies
wherein probable and subtle speeches are made use of in the most foul
and wicked actions. For that is not always true which Sophocles saith,
that

From naughty acts good words can ne’er proceed.

For even he himself is wont to apply pleasant reasonings and plausible
arguments to those manners and actions which are wicked or unbecoming.
And in another of his fellow-tragedians, we may see even Phaedra
herself represented as justifying her unlawful affection for Hippolytus
by accusing Theseus of ill-carriage towards her. And in his Troades,
he allows Helen the same liberty of speech against Hecuba, whom she
judgeth to be more worthy of punishment than herself for her adultery,
because she was the mother of Paris that tempted her thereto. A young
man therefore must not be accustomed to think any thing of that nature
handsomely or wittily spoken, nor to be pleased with such colorable
inventions; but rather more to abhor such words as tend to the defence
of wanton acts than the very acts themselves.

9. And lastly, it will be useful likewise to enquire into the cause why
each thing is said. For so Cato, when he was a boy, though he was wont
to be very observant of all his master’s commands, yet withal used to
ask the cause or reason why he so commanded. But poets are not to be
obeyed as pedagogues and lawgivers are, except they have reason to back
what they say. And that they will not want, when they speak well; and
if they speak ill, what they say will appear vain and frivolous. But
nowadays most young men very briskly demand the reason of such trivial
speeches as these, and enquire in what sense they are spoken:

It bodes ill luck, when vessels you set up,
To place the ladle on the mixing-cup.

Who from his chariot to another’s leaps,
Seldom his seat without a combat keeps.[66]

But to those of greater moment they give credence without examination,
as to those that follow:

The boldest men are daunted oftentimes,
When they’re reproached with their parents’ crimes:[67]

When any man is crushed by adverse fate,
His spirit should be low as his estate.

And yet such speeches relate to manners, and disquiet men’s lives
by begetting in them evil opinions and unworthy sentiments, except
they have learned to return answer to each of them thus: “Wherefore
is it necessary that a man who is crushed by adverse fate should
have a dejected spirit? Yea, why rather should he not struggle
against Fortune, and raise himself above the pressures of his low
circumstances? Why, if I myself be a good and wise son of an evil and
foolish father, does it not rather become me to bear myself confidently
upon the account of my own virtue, than to be dejected and dispirited
because of my father’s defects?” For he that can encounter such
speeches and oppose them after this manner, not yielding himself up to
be overset with the blast of every saying, but approving that speech of
Heraclitus, that

Whate’er is said, though void of sense and wit,
The size of a fool’s intellect doth fit,

will reject many such things as falsely and idly spoken.

10. These things therefore may be of use to preserve us from the
hurt we might get by the study of poems. Now, as on a vine the
fruit oftentimes lies shadowed and hidden under its large leaves
and luxuriant branches, so in the poet’s phrases and fictions that
encompass them there are also many profitable and useful things
concealed from the view of young men. This, however, ought not to be
suffered; nor should we be led away from things themselves thus, but
rather adhere to such of them as tend to the promoting of virtue and
the well forming of our manners. It will not be altogether useless
therefore, to treat briefly in the next place of passages of that
nature. Wherein I intend to touch only at some particulars, leaving
all longer discourses, and the trimming up and furnishing them with
a multitude of instances, to those who write more for show and
ostentation.

First, therefore, let our young man be taught to understand good and
bad manners and persons, and from thence apply his mind to the words
and deeds which the poet decently assigns to either of them. For
example, Achilles, though in some wrath, speaks to Agamemnon thus
decently:

Nor, when we take a Trojan town, can I
With thee in spoils and splendid prizes vie;[68]

whereas Thersites to the same person speaks reproachfully in this
manner:—

’Tis thine whate’er the warrior’s breast inflames,
The golden spoil, and thine the lovely dames.
With all the wealth our wars and blood bestow,
Thy tents are crowded and thy chests o’erflow.

Again, Achilles thus:—

Whene’er, by Jove’s decree, our conquering powers
Shall humble to the dust Troy’s lofty towers;

but Thersites thus:—

Whom I or some Greek else as captive bring.

Again, Diomedes, when Agamemnon taking a view of the army spoke
reproachfully to him,

To his hard words forbore to make reply,
For the respect he bare to majesty;

whereas Sthenelus, a man of small note, replies on him thus:—

Sir, when you know the truth, what need to lie?
For with our fathers we for valor vie.

Now the observation of such difference will teach the young man
the decency of a modest and moderate temper, and the unbecoming
nauseousness of the contrary vices of boasting and cracking of a man’s
own worth. And it is worth while also to take notice of the demeanor of
Agamemnon in the same passage. For he passeth by Sthenelus unspoken to;
but perceiving Ulysses to be offended, he neglects not him, but applies
himself to answer him:—

Struck with his generous wrath, the king replies.[69]

For to have apologized to every one had been too servile and
misbecoming the dignity of his person; whereas equally to have
neglected every one had been an act of insolence and imprudence. And
very handsome it is that Diomedes, though in the heat of the battle he
answers the king only with silence, yet after the battle was over useth
more liberty towards him, speaking thus:—

You called me coward, sir, before the Greeks.

It is expedient also to take notice of the different carriage of a wise
man and of a soothsayer popularly courting the multitude. For Chalcas
very unseasonably makes no scruple to traduce the king before the
people, as having been the cause of the pestilence that was befallen
them. But Nestor, intending to bring in a discourse concerning the
reconciling Achilles to him, that he might not seem to charge Agamemnon
before the multitude with the miscarriage his passion had occasioned,
only adviseth him thus:—

But thou, O king, to council call the old....
Wise weighty counsels aid a state distress’d,
And such a monarch as can choose the best;

which done, accordingly after supper he sends his ambassadors. Now this
speech of Nestor tended to the rectifying of what he had before done
amiss; but that of Chalcas, only to accuse and disparage him.

There is likewise consideration to be had of the different manners
of nations, such as these. The Trojans enter into battle with loud
outcries and great fierceness; but in the army of the Greeks,

Sedate and silent move the numerous bands;
No sound, no whisper, but the chief’s commands;
Those only heard, with awe the rest obey.

For when soldiers are about to engage an enemy, the awe they stand in
of their officers is an argument both of courage and obedience. For
which purpose Plato teacheth us that we ought to inure ourselves to
fear blame and disgrace more than labor and danger. And Cato was wont
to say that he liked men that were apt to blush better than those that
looked pale.

Moreover, there is a particular character to be noted of the men who
undertake for any action. For Dolon thus promiseth:—

I’ll pass through all their host in a disguise
To their flag-ship, where she at anchor lies.

But Diomedes promiseth nothing, but only tells them he shall fear
the less if they send a companion with him; whereby is intimated,
that discreet foresight is Grecian and civil, but rash confidence is
barbarous and evil; and the former is therefore to be imitated, and the
latter to be avoided.

It is a matter too of no unprofitable consideration, how the minds
of the Trojans and of Hector too were affected when he and Ajax were
about to engage in a single combat. For Aeschylus, when, upon one of
the fighters at fisticuffs in the Isthmian games receiving a blow on
the face, there was made a great outcry among the people, said: “What
a thing is practice! See how the lookers-on only cry out, but the man
that received the stroke is silent.” But when the poet tells us, that
the Greeks rejoiced when they saw Ajax in his glistering armor, but

The Trojans’ knees for very fear did quake,
And even Hector’s heart began to ache;[70]

who is there that wonders not at this difference,—when the heart of
him that was to run the risk of the combat only beats inwardly, as if
he were to undertake a mere wrestling or running match, but the very
bodies of the spectators tremble and shake, out of the kindness and
fear which they had for their king?

In the same poet also we may observe the difference betwixt the humor
of a coward and a valiant man. For Thersites

Against Achilles a great malice had,
And wise Ulysses he did hate as bad;

but Ajax is always represented as friendly to Achilles; and
particularly he speaks thus to Hector concerning him:—

Hector! approach my arm, and singly know
What strength thou hast, and what the Grecian foe.
Achilles shuns the fight; yet some there are
Not void of soul, and not unskill’d in war:

wherein he insinuates the high commendation of that valiant man. And in
what follows, he speaks like handsome things of his fellow-soldiers in
general, thus:—

Whole troops of heroes Greece has yet to boast,
And sends thee one, a sample of her host;

wherein he doth not boast himself to be the only or the best champion,
but one of those, among many others, who were fit to undertake that
combat.

What hath been said is sufficient upon the point of dissimilitudes;
except we think fit to add this, that many of the Trojans came into the
enemy’s power alive, but none of the Grecians; and that many of the
Trojans supplicated to their enemies,—as (for instance) Adrastus, the
sons of Antimachus, Lycaon,—and even Hector himself entreats Achilles
for a sepulture; but not one of these doth so, as judging it barbarous
to supplicate to a foe in the field, and more Greek-like either to
conquer or die.

11. But as, in the same plant, the bee feeds on the flower, the goat
on the bud, the hog on the root, and other living creatures on the
seed and the fruit; so in reading of poems, one man singleth out the
historical part, another dwells upon the elegancy and fit disposal of
words, as Aristophanes says of Euripides,—

His gallant language runs so smooth and round,
That I am ravisht with th’ harmonious sound;[71]

but others, to whom this part of my discourse is directed, mind only
such things as are useful to the bettering of manners. And such we are
to put in mind that it is an absurd thing, that those who delight in
fables should not let any thing slip them of the vain and extravagant
stories they find in poets, and that those who affect language should
pass by nothing that is elegantly and floridly expressed; and that
only the lovers of honor and virtue, who apply themselves to the study
of poems not for delight but for instruction’s sake, should slightly
and negligently observe what is spoken in them relating to valor,
temperance, or justice. Of this nature is the following:—

And stand we deedless, O eternal shame!
Till Hector’s arm involve the ships in flame?
Haste, let us join, and combat side by side.[72]

For to see a man of the greatest wisdom in danger of being totally cut
off with all those that take part with him, and yet affected less with
fear of death than of shame and dishonor, must needs excite in a young
man a passionate affection for virtue. And this,

Joyed was the Goddess, for she much did prize
A man that was alike both just and wise,

teacheth us to infer that the Deity delights not in a rich or a proper
or a strong man, but in one that is furnished with wisdom and justice.
Again, when the same Goddess (Minerva) saith that the reason why she
did not desert or neglect Ulysses was that he was

Gentle, of ready wit, of prudent mind,

she therein tells us that, of all things pertaining to us, nothing
is dear to the Gods and divine but our virtue, seeing like naturally
delights in like.

And seeing, moreover, that it both seemeth and really is a great thing
to be able to moderate a man’s anger, but a greater by far to guard
a man’s self beforehand by prudence, that he fall not into it nor be
surprised by it, therefore also such passages as tend that way are not
slightly to be represented to the readers; for example, that Achilles
himself—who was a man of no great forbearance, nor inclined to such
meekness—yet warns Priam to be calm and not to provoke him, thus,

Move me no more (Achilles thus replies,
While kindling anger sparkled in his eyes),
Nor seek by tears my steady soul to bend:
To yield thy Hector I myself intend:
Cease; lest, neglectful of high Jove’s command,
I show thee, king, thou tread’st on hostile land;

and that he himself first washeth and decently covereth the body of
Hector and then puts it into a chariot, to prevent his father’s seeing
it so unworthily mangled as it was,—

Lest the unhappy sire,
Provoked to passion, once more rouse to ire
The stern Pelides; and nor sacred age,
Nor Jove’s command, should check the rising rage.

For it is a piece of admirable prudence for a man so prone to anger,
as being by nature hasty and furious, to understand himself so well as
to set a guard upon his own inclinations, and by avoiding provocations
to keep his passion at due distance by the use of reason, lest he
should be unawares surprised by it. And after the same manner must the
man that is apt to be drunken forearm himself against that vice; and
he that is given to wantonness, against lust, as Agesilaus refused to
receive a kiss from a beautiful person addressing to him, and Cyrus
would not so much as endure to see Panthea. Whereas, on the contrary,
those that are not virtuously bred are wont to gather fuel to inflame
their passions, and voluntarily to abandon themselves to those
temptations to which of themselves they are endangered. But Ulysses
does not only restrain his own anger, but (perceiving by the discourse
of his son Telemachus, that through indignation conceived against such
evil men he was greatly provoked) he blunts his passion too beforehand,
and composeth him to calmness and patience, thus:—

There, if base scorn insult my reverend age,
Bear it, my son! repress thy rising rage.
If outraged, cease that outrage to repel;
Bear it, my son! howe’er thy heart rebel.

For as men are not wont to put bridles on their horses when they are
running in full speed, but bring them bridled beforehand to the race;
so do they use to preoccupy and predispose the minds of those persons
with rational considerations to enable them to encounter passion, whom
they perceive to be too mettlesome and unmanageable upon the sight of
provoking objects.

Furthermore, the young man is not altogether to neglect names
themselves when he meets with them; though he is not obliged to give
much heed to such idle descants as those of Cleanthes, who, while he
professeth himself an interpreter, plays the trifler, as in these
passages of Homer: Ζεῦ πάτερ Ἴδηθεν μεδέων, and Ζεῦ ἄνα Δωδωναῖε.[73]
For he will needs read the last two of these words joined into one, and
make them ἀναδωδωναῖε; for that the air evaporated from the earth by
exhalation (ἀνάδοσις) is so called. Yea, and Chrysippus too, though he
does not so trifle, yet is very jejune, while he hunts after improbable
etymologies. As when he will need force the words εὐρύοπα Κρονίδην to
import Jupiter’s excellent faculty in speaking and powerfulness to
persuade thereby.

But such things as these are fitter to be left to the examination of
grammarians; and we are rather to insist upon such passages as are both
profitable and persuasive. Such, for instance, as these:—

My early youth was bred to martial pains,
My soul impels me to the embattled plains!

How skill’d he was in each obliging art;
The mildest manners, and the gentlest heart.[74]

For while the author tells us that fortitude may be taught, and that an
obliging and graceful way of conversing with others is to be gotten by
art and the use of reason, he exhorts us not to neglect the improvement
of ourselves, but by observing our teachers’ instructions to learn a
becoming carriage, as knowing that clownishness and cowardice argue
ill-breeding and ignorance. And very suitable to what hath been said is
that which is said of Jupiter and Neptune:—

Gods of one source, of one ethereal race,
Alike divine, and heaven their native place;
But Jove the greater; first born of the skies,
And more than men or Gods supremely wise.[75]

For the poet therein pronounceth wisdom to be the most divine and royal
quality of all; as placing therein the greatest excellency of Jupiter
himself, and judging all virtues else to be necessarily consequent
thereunto. We are also to accustom a young man attentively to hear such
things as these:—

Urge him with truth to frame his fair replies
And sure he will, for wisdom never lies:

The praise of wisdom, in thy youth obtain’d,
An act so rash, Antilochus, has stain’d:

Say, is it just, my friend, that Hector’s ear
From such a warrior such a speech should hear?
I deemed thee once the wisest of thy kind,
But ill this insult suits a prudent mind.[76]

These speeches teach us that it is beneath wise men to lie or to deal
otherwise than fairly, even in games, or to blame other men without
just cause. And when the poet attributes Pindarus’s violation of the
truce to his folly, he withal declares his judgment that a wise man
will not be guilty of an unjust action. The like may we also infer
concerning continence, taking our ground for it from these passages:—

For him Antaea burn’d with lawless flame,
And strove to tempt him from the paths of fame.
In vain she tempted the relentless youth,
Endued with wisdom, sacred fear, and truth:

At first, with worthy shame and decent pride,
The royal dame his lawless suit denied!
For virtue’s image yet possessed her mind:[77]

in which speeches the poet assigns wisdom to be the cause of
continence. And when in exhortations made to encourage soldiers to
fight, he speaks in this manner:—

What mean you, Lycians? Stand! O stand, for shame!

Yet each reflect who prizes fame or breath,
On endless infamy, on instant death;
For, lo! the fated time, the appointed shore;
Hark! the gates burst, the brazen barriers roar![78]

he seems to intimate that continent men are valiant men; because they
fear the shame of base actions, and can trample on pleasures and stand
their ground in the greatest hazards. Whence Timotheus, in the play
called Persae, takes occasion handsomely to exhort the Grecians thus:—

Brave soldiers of just shame in awe should stand;
For the blushing face oft helps the fighting hand.

And Aeschylus also makes it a point of wisdom not to be blown up with
pride when a man is honored, nor to be moved or elevated with the
acclamations of a multitude, writing thus of Amphiaraus:—

His shield no emblem bears; his generous soul
Wishes to be, not to appear, the best;
While the deep furrows of his noble mind
Harvests of wise and prudent counsel bear.[79]

For it is the part of a wise man to value himself upon the
consciousness of his own true worth and excellency.

Whereas, therefore, all inward perfections are reducible to wisdom, it
appears that all sorts of virtue and learning are included in it.

12. Again, boys may be instructed, by reading the poets as they ought,
to draw something that is useful and profitable even from those
passages that are most suspected as wicked and absurd; as the bee is
taught by Nature to gather the sweetest and most pleasant honey from
the harshest flowers and sharpest thorns. It does indeed at the first
blush cast a shrewd suspicion on Agamemnon of taking a bribe, when
Homer tells us that he discharged that rich man from the wars who
presented him with his fleet mare Aethe:—

Whom rich Echepolus, more rich than brave,
To ’scape the wars, to Agamemnon gave
(Aethe her name), at home to end his days;
Base wealth preferring to eternal praise.[80]

Yet, as saith Aristotle, it was well done of him to prefer a good
beast before such a man. For, the truth is, a dog or ass is of more
value than a timorous and cowardly man that wallows in wealth and
luxury. Again, Thetis seems to do indecently, when she exhorts her son
to follow his pleasures and minds him of companying with women. But
even here, on the other side, the continency of Achilles is worthy
to be considered; who, though he dearly loved Briseis—newly returned
to him too,—yet, when he knew his life to be near its end, does not
hasten to the fruition of pleasures, nor, when he mourns for his friend
Patroclus, does he (as most men are wont) shut himself up from all
business and neglect his duty, but only bars himself from recreations
for his sorrow’s sake, while yet he gives himself up to action and
military employments. And Archilochus is not praiseworthy either, who,
in the midst of his mourning for his sister’s husband drowned in the
sea, contrives to dispel his grief by drinking and merriment. And yet
he gives this plausible reason to justify that practice of his,

To drink and dance, rather than mourn, I choose;
Nor wrong I him, whom mourning can’t reduce.

For, if he judged himself to do nothing amiss when he followed sports
and banquets, sure, we shall not do worse, if in whatever circumstances
we follow the study of philosophy, or manage public affairs, or go to
the market or to the Academy, or follow our husbandry. Wherefore those
corrections also are not to be rejected which Cleanthes and Antisthenes
have made use of. For Antisthenes, seeing the Athenians all in a tumult
in the theatre, and justly, upon the pronunciation of this verse,—

Except what men think base, there’s nothing ill,[81]

presently subjoined this corrective,

What’s base is base,—believe men what they will.

And Cleanthes, hearing this passage concerning wealth:

Great is th’ advantage that great wealth attends,
For oft with it we purchase health and friends;[82]

presently altered it thus:

Great disadvantage oft attends on wealth;
We purchase whores with’t and destroy our health.

And Zeno corrected that of Sophocles,

The man that in a tyrant’s palace dwells
His liberty for’s entertainment sells,

after this manner:

No: if he came in free, he cannot lose
His liberty, though in a tyrant’s house;

meaning by a free man one that is undaunted and magnanimous, and one of
a spirit too great to stoop beneath itself. And why may not we also,
by some such acclamations as those, call off young men to the better
side, by using some things spoken by poets after the same manner? For
example, it is said,

’Tis all that in this life one can require,
To hit the mark he aims at in desire.

To which we may reply thus:

’Tis false; except one level his desire
At what’s expedient, and no more require.

For it is an unhappy thing and not to be wished, for a man to obtain
and be master of what he desires if it be inexpedient. Again this
saying,

Thou, Agamemnon, must thyself prepare
Of joy and grief by turns to take thy share:
Thy father, Atreus, sure, ne’er thee begat,
To be an unchanged favorite of Fate:[83]

we may thus invert:

Thy father, Atreus, never thee begat,
To be an unchanged favorite of Fate:
Therefore, if moderate thy fortunes are,
Thou shouldst rejoice always, and grief forbear.

Again it is said,

Alas! this ill comes from the powers divine,
That oft we see what’s good, yet it decline.[84]

Yea, rather, say we, it is a brutish and irrational and wretched fault
of ours, that when we understand better things, we are carried away
to the pursuit of those which are worse, through our intemperance and
effeminacy. Again, one says,

’Tis not the teacher’s speech but practice moves.[85]

Yea, rather, say we, both the speech and practice,—or the practice
by the means of speech,—as the horse is managed with the bridle, and
the ship with the helm. For virtue hath no instrument so suitable and
agreeable to human nature to work on men withal, as that of rational
discourse. Again, we meet with this character of some person:

A. Is he more prone to male or female loves?
B. He’s flexible both ways, where beauty moves.

But it had been better said thus:

He’s flexible to both, where virtue moves.

For it is no commendation of a man’s dexterity to be tossed up and down
as pleasure and beauty move him, but an argument rather of a weak and
unstable disposition. Once more, this speech,

Religion damps the courage of our minds,
And ev’n wise men to cowardice inclines,

is by no means to be allowed; but rather the contrary,

Religion truly fortifies men’s minds,
And a wise man to valiant acts inclines,

and gives not occasion of fear to any but weak and foolish persons and
such as are ungrateful to the Deity, who are apt to look on that divine
power and principle which is the cause of all good with suspicion and
jealousy, as being hurtful unto them. And so much for that which I call
correction of poets’ sayings.

13. There is yet another way of improving poems, taught us well by
Chrysippus; which is, by accommodation of any saying, to transfer that
which is useful and serviceable in it to divers things of the same
kind. For whereas Hesiod saith,

If but a cow be lost, the common fame
Upon the next ill neighbor lays the blame;[86]

the same may be applied to a man’s dog or ass or any other beast of his
which is liable to the like mischance. Again, Euripides saith,

How can that man be called a slave, who slights
Ev’n death itself, which servile spirits frights?

the like whereof may be said of hard labor or painful sickness. For as
physicians, finding by experience the force of any medicine in the cure
of some one disease, make use of it by accommodation, proportionably to
every other disease of affinity thereto, so are we to deal with such
speeches as are of a common import and apt to communicate their value
to other things; we must not confine them to that one thing only to
which they were at first adapted, but transfer them to all other of
like nature, and accustom young men by many parallel instances to see
the communicableness of them, and exercise the promptness of their wits
in such applications. So that when Menander says,

Happy is he who wealth and wisdom hath,

they may be able to judge that the same is fitly applicable to glory
and authority and eloquence also. And the reproof which Ulysses gives
Achilles, when he found him sitting in Scyrus in the apartment of the
young ladies,

Thou, who from noblest Greeks deriv’st thy race,
Dost thou with spinning wool thy birth disgrace?

may be as well given to the prodigal, to him that undertakes any
dishonest way of living, yea, to the slothful and unlearned person,
thus:

Thou, who from noblest Greeks deriv’st thy race,
Dost thou with fuddling thy great birth disgrace?

or dost thou spend thy time in dicing, or quail-striking,[87] or deal
in adulterate wares or griping usury, not minding any thing that is
great and worthy thy noble extraction? So when they read,

For Wealth, the God most serve, I little care,
Since the worst men his favors often wear,[88]

they may be able to infer, therefore, as little regard is to be had to
glory and bodily beauty and princely robes and priestly garlands, all
which also we see to be the enjoyments of very bad men. Again, when
they read this passage,

A coward father propagates his vice,
And gets a son heir to his cowardice,

they may in truth apply the same to intemperance, to superstition,
to envy, and all other diseases of men’s minds. Again, whereas it is
handsomely said of Homer,

Unhappy Paris, fairest to behold!

and

Hector, of noble form,[89]

for herein he shows that a man who hath no greater excellency than
that of beauty to commend him deserves to have it mentioned with
contempt and ignominy,—such expressions we should make use of in like
cases to repress the insolence of such as bear themselves high upon
the account of such things as are of no real value, and to teach young
men to look upon such compellations as “O thou richest of men,” and “O
thou that excellest in feasting, in multitudes of attendants, in herds
of cattle, yea, and in eloquent speaking itself,” to be (as they are
indeed) expressions that import reproach and infamy. For, in truth, a
man that designs to excel ought to endeavor it in those things that are
in themselves most excellent, and to become chief in the chiefest, and
great in the greatest things. Whereas glory that ariseth from things
in themselves small and inconsiderable is inglorious and contemptible.
To mind us whereof we shall never be at a loss for instances, if, in
reading Homer especially, we observe how he applieth the expressions
that import praise or disgrace; wherein we have clear proof that he
makes small account of the good things either of the body or Fortune.
And first of all, in meetings and salutations, men do not call others
fair or rich or strong, but use such terms of commendation as these:

Son of Laertes, from great Jove deriving
Thy pedigree, and skilled in wise contriving;

Hector, thou son of Priam, whose advice
With wisest Jove’s men count of equal price;

Achilles, son of Peleus, whom all story
Shall mention as the Grecians’ greatest glory;

Divine Patroclus, for thy worth thou art,
Of all the friends I have, lodged next my heart.[90]

And moreover, when they speak disgracefully of any person, they touch
not at bodily defects, but direct all their reproaches to vicious
actions; as for instance.

A dogged-looking, drunken beast thou art,
And in thy bosom hast a deer’s faint heart;

Ajax, at brawling valiant still,
Whose tongue is used to speaking ill;

A tongue so loose hung, and so vain withal,
Idomeneus, becomes thee not at all;

Ajax, thy tongue doth oft offend;
For of thy boasting there’s no end.[91]

Lastly, when Ulysses reproacheth Thersites, he objecteth not to him his
lameness nor his baldness nor his hunched back, but the vicious quality
of indiscreet babbling. On the other side, when Juno means to express a
dalliance or motherly fondness to her son Vulcan, she courts him with
an epithet taken from his halting, thus,

Rouse thee, my limping son![92]

In this instance, Homer does (as it were) deride those who are ashamed
of their lameness or blindness, as not thinking any thing a disgrace
that is not in itself disgraceful, nor any person liable to a reproach
for that which is not imputable to himself but to Fortune. These two
great advantages may be made by those who frequently study poets;—the
learning moderation, to keep them from unseasonable and foolish
reproaching others with their misfortunes, when they themselves enjoy a
constant current of prosperity; and magnanimity, that under variety of
accidents they be not dejected nor disturbed, but meekly bear the being
scoffed at, reproached, and drolled upon. Especially, let them have
that saying of Philemon ready at hand in such cases:

That spirit’s well in tune, whose sweet repose
No railer’s tongue can ever discompose.

And yet, if one that so rails do himself deserve reprehension, thou
mayst take occasion to retort upon him his own vices and inordinate
passions; as when Adrastus in the tragedy is assaulted thus by Alcmaeon.

Thy sister’s one that did her husband kill,

he returns him this answer,

But thou thyself thy mother’s blood did spill.

For as they who scourge a man’s garments do not touch the body, so
those that turn other men’s evil fortunes or mean births to matter
of reproach do only with vanity and folly enough lash their external
circumstances, but touch not their internal part, the soul, nor those
things which truly need correction and reproof.

14. Moreover, as we have above taught you to abate and lessen the
credit of evil and hurtful poems by setting in opposition to them
the famous speeches and sentences of such worthy men as have managed
public affairs, so will it be useful to us, where we find any things
in them of civil and profitable import, to improve and strengthen
them by testimonies and proofs taken from philosophers, withal giving
these the credit of being the first inventors of them. For this is
both just and profitable to be done, seeing by this means such sayings
receive an additional strength and esteem, when it appears that what
is spoken on the stage or sung to the harp or occurs in a scholar’s
lesson is agreeable to the doctrines of Pythagoras and Plato, and that
the sentences of Chilo and Bias tend to the same issue with those
that are found in the authors which children read. Therefore must we
industriously show them that these poetical sentences,

Not these, O daughter, are thy proper cares,
Thee milder arts befit, and softer wars;
Sweet smiles are thine, and kind endearing charms;
To Mars and Pallas leave the deeds of arms;

Jove’s angry with thee, when thy unmanaged rage
With those that overmatch thee doth engage;[93]

differ not in substance but bear plainly the same sense with that
philosophical sentence, Know thyself. And these,

Fools, who by wrong seek to augment their store,
And know not how much half than all is more;

Of counsel giv’n to mischievous intents,
The man that gives it most of all repents;[94]

are of near kin to what we find in the determination of Plato, in his
books entitled Gorgias and Concerning the Commonwealth, to wit, that it
is worse to do than to suffer injury, and that a man more endamageth
himself, when he hurts another, than he would be damnified if he were
the sufferer. And that of Aeschylus,

Cheer up, friend; sorrows, when they highest climb,
What they exceed in measure want in time,

we must inform them, is but the same famous sentence which is so much
admired in Epicurus, that great griefs are but short, and those that
are of long continuance are but small. The former clause whereof is
that which Aeschylus here saith expressly, and the latter but the
consequent of that. For if a great and intense sorrow do not last, then
that which doth last is not great nor hard to be borne. And those words
of Thespis,

Seest not how Jove,—because he cannot lie
Nor vaunt nor laugh at impious drollery,
And pleasure’s charms are things to him unknown,—
Among the Gods wears the imperial crown?

wherein differ they from what Plato says, that the divine nature is
seated far from both joy and grief? And that saying of Bacchylides,

Virtue alone doth lasting honor gain,
But men of wretched souls oft wealth attain;

and those of Euripides much of the same import.

Hence temperance in my esteem excels,
Because it constantly with good men dwells;

How much soe’er to honor thou aspire,
And strive by riches virtue to acquire,
Still shall thy lot to good men wretched seem;

do they not evidently confirm to us what the philosophers say of riches
and other external good things, that without virtue they are fruitless
and unprofitable enjoyments?

Now thus to accommodate and reconcile poetry to the doctrines of
philosophy strips it of its fabulous and personated parts, and makes
those things which it delivers usefully to acquire also the reputation
of gravity; and over and above, it inclines the soul of a young man to
receive the impressions of philosophical precepts. For he will hereby
be enabled to come to them not altogether destitute of some sort of
relish of them, not as to things that he has heard nothing of before,
nor with an head confusedly full of the false notions which he hath
sucked in from the daily tattle of his mother and nurse,—yea, sometimes
too of his father and pedant,—who have been wont to speak of rich men
as the happy men and mention them always with honor, and to express
themselves concerning death and pain with horror, and to look on virtue
without riches and glory as a thing of nought and not to be desired.
Whence it comes to pass, that when such youths first do hear things of
a quite contrary nature from philosophers, they are surprised with a
kind of amazement, trouble, and stupid astonishment, which makes them
afraid to entertain or endure them, except they be dealt with as those
who come out of very great darkness into the light of the bright sun,
that is, be first accustomed for a while to behold those doctrines
in fabulous authors, as in a kind of false light, which hath but a
moderate brightness and is easy to be looked on and borne without
disturbance to the weak sight. For having before heard or read from
poets such things as these are,—

Mourn at one’s birth, as th’ inlet t’ all that grieves;
But joy at death, as that which man relieves;

Of worldly things a mortal needs but twain;
The spring supplies his drink, the earth his grain:

O tyranny, to barbarous nations dear!

This in all human happiness is chief,
To know as little as we can of grief;[95]

they are the less disturbed and offended when they hear from
philosophers that no man ought to be much concerned about death; that
the riches of nature are defined and limited; that the happiness of
man’s life doth not consist in the abundance of wealth or vastness
of employments or height of authority and power, but in freedom from
sorrow, in moderation of passions, and in such a temper of mind as
measures all things by the use of Nature.

Wherefore, upon all these accounts, as well as for all the reasons
before mentioned, youth stands in need of good government to manage
it in the reading of poetry, that being free from all prejudicate
opinions, and rather instructed beforehand in conformity thereunto, it
may with more calmness, friendliness, and familiarity pass from thence
to the study of philosophy.

OF ENVY AND HATRED.

1. Envy and hatred are passions so like each other that they are
often taken for the same. And generally, vice has (as it were) many
hooks, whereby it gives unto those passions that hang thereto many
opportunities to be twisted and entangled with one another; for as
differing diseases of the body agree in many like causes and effects,
so do the disturbances of the mind. He who is in prosperity is equally
an occasion of grief to the envious and to the malicious man; therefore
we look upon benevolence, which is a willing our neighbor’s good, as
an opposite to both envy and hatred, and fancy these two to be the
same because they have a contrary purpose to that of love. But their
resemblances make them not so much one as their unlikeness makes
them distinct. Therefore we endeavor to describe each of them apart,
beginning at the original of either passion.

2. Hatred proceeds from an opinion that the person we hate is evil,
if not generally so, at least in particular to us. For they who think
themselves injured are apt to hate the author of their wrong; yea, even
those who are reputed injurious or malicious to others than ourselves
we usually nauseate and abhor. But envy has only one sort of object,
the felicity of others. Whence it becomes infinite, and, like an evil
or diseased eye, is offended with every thing that is bright. On the
other hand, hatred is always determined by the subject it adheres to.

3. Secondly, hatred may be conceived even against brutes; for there are
some men who have an antipathy to cats or beetles or toads or serpents.
Germanicus could endure neither the crowing nor the sight of a cock;
and the Persian Magi were killers of mice, as creatures which they
both hated themselves and accounted odious to God. In like manner also
all the Arabians and Ethiopians abhor them. But envy is purely a human
passion, and directed only against man.

4. Envy is not likely to be found among brutes, whose fancies are not
moved by the apprehensions of each other’s good or evil; neither can
they be spirited with the notions of glorious or dishonorable, by which
envy is chiefly stirred up. Yet they have mutual hatred; they kill each
other, and wage most incredible wars. The eagles and the dragons fight,
the crows and the owls, yea, the little titmouse and linnet; insomuch
that it is said, the very blood of these creatures, when slain, will by
no means be mixed; but though you would temper them together, they will
immediately separate again. The lion also vehemently hates the cock,
and the elephant the hog; but this probably proceeds from fear; for
what they fear, the same are they inclined to hate.

We see then herein a great difference betwixt envy and hate, that the
one is natural to brutes, but they are not at all capable of the other.

5. Further, envy is always unjust; for none wrong by being happy, and
upon this sole account they are envied. But hatred is often just; for
there are some men so much to be avoided and disliked, that we should
judge those worthy to be hated themselves who do not shun and detest
them. And of this it is no weak evidence, that many will acknowledge
they hate, but none will confess they envy; and hatred of the evil is
registered amongst laudable things.

Therefore, as some were commending Charillus, the nephew of
Lycurgus and king of Sparta, for his universally mild and gentle
disposition,—How, answered his colleague, can Charillus be a virtuous
person, who is pleasing even to the vicious? So the poet too, when he
had variously and with an infinite curiosity described the deformities
of Thersites’s body, easily couched all the baseness of his manners in
a word,—

Most hateful to Achilles and Ulysses too;

for to be an enemy to the good is the greatest extravagance of vice.

Men will deny the envy; and when it is alleged, will feign a thousand
excuses, pretending they were angry, or that they feared or hated the
person, cloaking envy with the name of any passion they can think of,
and concealing it as the most loathsome sickness of the soul.

6. Moreover, these disturbances of the mind, like plants, must be
nourished and augmented by the same roots from which they spring;
therefore hatred increases as the persons hated grow worse, while
envy swells bigger as the envied rise higher in the true braveries of
virtue. Upon this consideration Themistocles, whilst he was yet young,
said that he had done nothing gallant, for he was not yet envied. And
we know that, as the cantharis is most busy with ripe fruits and roses
in their beauty, so envy is most employed about the eminently good and
those who are glorious in their places and esteem.

Again, extreme badness makes hatred more vehement and bitter. The
Athenians therefore had so utter an abhorrence of those who accused
Socrates, that they would neither lend them fire, nor answer them any
question, nor wash with them in the same water, but commanded the
servants to pour it out as polluted; till these sycophants, no longer
able to bear up under the pressure of this hatred, put an end to their
own lives.

Yet envy often gives place to the splendor of a matchless prosperity.
For it is not likely that any envied Alexander or Cyrus, when they
arrived at the height of their conquests and became lords of all. But
as the sun, where he passes highest and sends down his beams most
directly, has none or very little shadow, so they who are exalted to
the meridian of fortune, shining aloof over the head of envy, have
scarce any thing of their brightness eclipsed, while envy retires,
being driven away by the brightness overspreading it.

On the contrary, hatred is not vanquished by the greatness and glory
of its objects. For though Alexander had not one to envy him, yet he
had many haters, by whose treacheries at last he fell. So, on the other
side, misfortunes cause envy to cease, but take not enmity away; for
men will be malicious even toward abject enemies, but none envy the
distressed. However, what was said by one of our Sophists, that the
envious are tenderly inclinable to pity, is true; and in this appears
a great unlikeness of these passions, that hatred leaves neither the
happy nor the miserable, but envy becomes languid when its object has
either prosperity or adversity in excess.

7. We shall better understand this from the poising them together.

Men let go their enmity and hatred, when either they are persuaded they
were not injured at all, or if they now believe them to be good whom
before they hated as evil, or, lastly, when they are appeased by the
insinuations of a benefit received. For as Thucydides saith, A later
service or good turn, if it be done at the right moment, will take away
the ill resenting of a former fault, though this was greater than the
recompense.[96]

Yet the first of these removes not envy, for men will persist in
this vice, though they know they are not wronged; and the two latter
(the esteem or credit of a person, and the bestowing a favor) do
exasperate it more. For they most envy the virtuous, as those who are
in possession of the chiefest good; and when they receive a kindness
from any in prosperity, it is with reluctance, as though they grudged
them not only the power but the will of conferring it; the one of which
comes from their happy fortune, the other from their virtue. Both are
good. Therefore envy is an entirely distinct affection from hatred,
since, as we see, the very things that appease the one only rouse and
exasperate the other.

8. Now let us consider a little the inclination and bent of either
passion.

The design of hatred is to endamage; and hence they define it, an
insidious desire and purpose of doing hurt. But envy aims not at this.
Many envy their familiars and kinsfolk, but have no thoughts of their
ruin nor of so much as bringing any troubles upon them; only their
felicity is a burden. Though they will perhaps diminish their glory and
splendor what they can, yet they endeavor not their utter subversion;
being, as it were, content to pull down so much only of an high stately
house as hindered the light and obscured them with too great a shade.

HOW TO KNOW A FLATTERER FROM A FRIEND.

To Antiochus Philopappus.

1. PLATO is of opinion that it is very pardonable in a man to
acknowledge that he has any extraordinary passion for himself; and yet
the humor is attended with this ill consequent, besides several others,
that it renders us incapable of making a right judgment of ourselves.
For our affections usually blind our discerning faculties, unless we
have learned to raise them above the sordid level of things congenial
and familiar to us, to those which are truly noble and excellent in
themselves. And hence it is that we are so frequently exposed to the
attempts of a parasite, under the disguise and vizard of a friend. For
self-love, that grand flatterer within, willingly entertains another
from without, who will but soothe up and second the man in the good
opinions he has conceived of himself. For he who deservedly lies
under the character of one that loves to be flattered is doubtless
sufficiently fond of himself; and through abundance of complaisance to
his own person, not only wishes but thinks himself master of all those
perfections which may recommend him to others. And though indeed it be
laudable enough to covet such accomplishments, yet is it altogether
unsafe for any man to fancy them inherent in him.

Now, if truth be a ray of the divinity, as Plato says it is, and the
source of all the good that derives upon either Gods or men, then
certainly the flatterer must be looked upon as a public enemy to all
the Gods, and especially to Apollo; for he always acts counter to that
celebrated oracle of his, Know thyself, endeavoring to make every man
his own cheat, by keeping him ignorant of the good and ill qualities
that are in him; whereupon the good never arrive at perfection, and the
ill grow incorrigible.

2. Did flattery, indeed, as most other misfortunes do, generally
or altogether wait on the debauched and ignoble part of mankind,
the mischief were of less consequence, and might admit of an easier
prevention. But, as worms breed most in sweet and tender woods,
so usually the most obliging, the most brave and generous tempers
readiliest receive and longest entertain the flattering insect that
hangs and grows upon them. And since, to use Simonides’s expression,
it is not for persons of a narrow fortune, but for gentlemen of
estates, to keep a good stable of horses; so never saw we flattery the
attendant of the poor, the inglorious and inconsiderable plebeian, but
of the grandees of the world, the distemper and bane of great families
and affairs, the plague in kings’ chambers, and the ruin of their
kingdoms. Therefore it is a business of no small importance, and one
which requires no ordinary circumspection, so to be able to know a
flatterer in every shape he assumes, that the counterfeit resemblance
some time or other bring not true friendship itself into suspicion and
disrepute. For parasites,—like lice, which desert a dying man, whose
palled and vapid blood can feed them no longer,—never intermix in dry
and insipid business where there is nothing to be got; but prey upon a
noble quarry, the ministers of state and potentates of the earth, and
afterwards lousily shirk off, if the greatness of their fortune chance
to leave them. But it will not be wisdom in us to stay till such fatal
junctures, and then try the experiment, which will not only be useless
but dangerous and hurtful; for it is a deplorable thing for a man to
find himself then destitute of friends, when he most wants them, and
has no opportunity either of exchanging his false and faithless friend
for a fast and honest one. And therefore we should rather try our
friend, as we do our money, whether or not he be passable and current,
before we need him. For it is not enough to discover the cheat to our
cost, but we must so understand the flatterer, that he put no cheat
upon us; otherwise we should act like those who must needs take poison
to know its strength, and foolishly hazard their lives to inform their
judgment. And as we cannot approve of this carelessness, so neither
can we of that too scrupulous humor of those who, taking the measures
of true friendship only from the bare honesty and usefulness of the
man, immediately suspect a pleasant and easy conversation for a cheat.
For a friend is not a dull tasteless thing, nor does the decorum of
friendship consist in sourness and austerity of temper, but its very
port and gravity is soft and amiable,—

Where Love and all the Graces do reside.[97]

For it is not only a comfort to the afflicted,

To enjoy the courtesy of his kindest friend,[98]

as Euripides speaks; but friendship extends itself to both fortunes, as
well brightens and adorns prosperity as allays the sorrows that attend
adversity. And as Evenus used to say that fire makes the best sauce,
so friendship, wherewith God has seasoned the circumstances of our
mortality, gives a relish to every condition, renders them all easy,
sweet, and agreeable enough. And indeed, did not the laws of friendship
admit of a little pleasantry and good humor, why should the parasite
insinuate himself under that disguise? And yet he, as counterfeit gold
imitates the brightness and lustre of the true, always puts on the
easiness and freedom of a friend, is always pleasant and obliging, and
ready to comply with the humor of his company. And therefore it is
no way reasonable either, to look upon every just character that is
given us as a piece of flattery; for certainly a due and seasonable
commendation is as much the duty of one friend to another as a
pertinent and serious reprehension; nay indeed, a sour querulous temper
is perfectly repugnant to the laws of friendship and conversation;
whereas a man takes a chiding patiently from a friend who is as ready
to praise his virtues as to animadvert upon his vices, willingly
persuading himself that mere necessity obliged him to reprimand, whom
kindness had first moved to commend.

3. Why then, some may say, it is infinitely difficult at this rate
to distinguish a flatterer from a friend, since there is no apparent
difference either betwixt the satisfaction they create or the praises
they bestow. Nay, it is observable, that a parasite is frequently
more obsequious and obliging than a friend himself. Well, the way
then to discover the disparity? Why, I will tell you; if you would
learn the character of a true subtle flatterer, who nicks his point
_secundum artem_, you must not, with the vulgar, mistake those
sordid smell-feasts and poor trencher-slaves for your men, who begin to
prate as soon as they have washed their hands in order to dinner, as
one says of them, and ere they are well warmed with a good cut of the
first dish and a glass of wine, betray the narrow soul that acts them
by the nauseous and fulsome buffoonery they vent at table. For sure
it needed no great sagacity to detect the flattery of Melanthius, the
parasite of Alexander of Pherae, who, being asked how his master was
murdered, made answer, With a thrust which went in at his side, but
into my belly. Nor must we, again, confine our notions of flatterers to
those sharping fellows who ply about rich men’s tables, whom neither
fire nor sword nor porter can keep from supper; nor yet to such as were
those female parasites of Cyprus, who going into Syria were nick-named
Steps, because they cringed so to the great ladies of that country that
they mounted their chariots on their backs.

4. Well, but after all, who is this flatterer then, whom we ought so
industriously to avoid?

I answer: He who neither professes nor seems to flatter; who never
haunts your kitchen, is never observed to watch the dial that he may
nick your supper-time; who won’t drink to excess, but will keep his
brains about him; who is prying and inquisitive, would mix in your
business, and wind himself into your secrets: in short, he who acts
the friend, not with the air of a comedian or a satirist, but with the
port and gravity of a tragedian. For, as Plato says, It is the height
of injustice to appear just and be really a knave. So are we to look
upon those flatterers as most dangerous who walk not barefaced but in
disguise, who make no sport but mind their business; for these often
personate the true and sincere friend so exactly, that it is enough
to make him fall under the like suspicion of a cheat, unless we be
extremely curious in remarking the difference betwixt them. It is
storied of Gobryas (one of the Persian nobility, who joined with Darius
against the Magi), that he pursued one of them into a dark room, and
there fell upon him; during the scuffle Darius came in and drew upon
the enemy, but durst not push at him, lest perhaps he might wound his
confederate Gobryas with the thrust; whereupon Gobryas bade him, rather
than fail, run both through together. But since we can by no means
admit of that vulgar saying, Let my friend perish, so my enemy perish
with him, but had rather still endeavor at the discovery of a parasite
from a friend, notwithstanding the nearness of the resemblance, we
ought to use our utmost care, lest at any time we indifferently reject
the good with the bad, or unadvisedly retain the bad with the good, the
friend and flatterer together. For as those wild grains which usually
grow up with wheat, and are of the same figure and bigness with it,
are not easily winnowed from it,—for they either cannot pass through
the holes of the sieve, if narrow, or pass together with the wheat,
if larger,—so is it infinitely difficult to distinguish flattery from
friendship, because the one so exquisitely mixes with all the passions,
humors, interests, and inclinations of the other.

5. Now because the enjoyment of a friend is attended with the
greatest satisfaction incident to humanity, therefore the flatterer
always endeavors to entrap us by rendering his conversation highly
pleasant and agreeable. Again, because all acts of kindness and mutual
beneficence are the constant attendants upon true friendship (on which
account we usually say, A friend is more necessary than fire or water),
therefore the flatterer is ready upon every occasion to obtrude his
service upon you, and will with an indefatigable bustle and zeal seek
to oblige you if he can.

In the next place, the parasite observes that all true friendship takes
its origin from a concurrence of like humors and inclinations, and that
the same passions, the same aversions and desires, are the first cement
of a true and lasting friendship. He therefore composes his nature,
like unformed matter, striving to fit and adapt it by imitation to the
person on whom he designs, that it may be pliant and yielding to any
impression that he shall think fit to stamp upon it; and, in fine, he
so neatly resembles the original, that one would swear,—

Sure thou the very Achilles art, and not his son.

But the most exquisite fineness of a flatterer consists in his
imitation of that freedom of discourse which friends particularly use
in mutually reprehending each other. For finding that men usually
take it for what it really is, the natural language of friendship, as
peculiar to it as certain notes or voices are to certain animals, and
that, on the contrary, a shy sheepish reservedness looks both rude and
unfriendly, he lets not even this proper character of a friend escape
his imitation. But as skilful cooks use to correct luscious meats with
sharp and poignant sauce, that they may not be so apt to overcharge
the stomach; so he seasons his flattery now and then with a little
smartness and severity, lest the fulsomeness of repeated dissimulation
should pall and cloy the company. And yet his reprehensions always
carry something in them that looks not true and genuine; he seems to
do it, but with a kind of a sneering and grinning countenance at the
best; and though his reproofs may possibly tickle the ear, yet they
never strike effectually upon the heart. On these accounts then it is
as difficult to discern a flatterer from a friend, as to know those
animals again which always wear the livery of the last thing they touch
upon. And therefore, since he puts so easily upon us under the disguise
and appearance of a friend, it will be our business at present to
unmask the hypocrite, and show him in other men’s shapes and colors, as
Plato speaks, since he has none properly his own.

6. Well then, let us enquire regularly into this affair. We have
already asserted, that friendship generally takes its rise from a
conformity of tempers and dispositions, whereby different persons come
to have the same taste of the like humors, customs, studies, exercises,
and employs, as these following verses import:—

Old men with old, and boys with boys agree;
And women’s clack with women’s company.
Men that are crazy, full of sores and pain,
Love to diseased persons to complain.
And they who labor under adverse fate,
Tell their sad stories to th’ unfortunate.

The flatterer then, observing how congenial it is to our natures
to delight in the conversation of those who are, as it were, the
counterpart of ourselves, makes his first approaches to our affections
at this avenue, where he gradually advances (like one making towards a
wild beast in a pasture, with a design to tame and bring it to hand) by
accommodating himself to the same studies, business, and color of life
with the person upon whom he designs, till at last the latter gives
him an opportunity to catch him, and becomes tractable by the man who
strokes him. All this while the flatterer falls foul upon those courses
of life, persons, and things he perceives his cully to disapprove, and
again as extravagantly commends those he is pleased to honor with his
approbation, still persuading him that his choice and dislike are the
results of a solid and discerning judgment and not of passion.

7. Well, then, by what signs or tokens shall we be able to know this
counterfeit copy of ourselves from a true and genuine likeness?

In the first place, we must accurately remark upon the whole tenor of
his life and conversation, whether or not the resemblance he pretends
to the original be of any continuance, natural and easy, and all of
a piece; whether he square his actions according to any one steady
and uniform model, as becomes an ingenuous lover of conversation and
friendship, which is all of one thread, and still like itself; for this
is a true friend indeed. But the flatterer, who has no principles in
him, and leads not a life properly his own, but forms and moulds it
according to the various humors and caprices of those he designs to
bubble, is never one and the same man, but a mere dapple or trimmer,
who changes shapes with his company, like water that always turns and
winds itself into the figure of the channel through which it flows.
Apes, it seems, are usually caught by their antic mimicry of the
motions and gesticulations of men; and yet the men themselves are
trepanned by the same craft of imitation in a flatterer, who adapts
himself to their several humors, fencing and wrestling with one,
singing and dancing with another. If he is in chase of a spark that
delights in a pack of dogs, he follows him at the heels, hollowing
almost like Phaedra,

O what a pleasure ’tis, ye Gods, to wind
The shrill-mouthed horn and chase the dappled hind;[99]

and yet the hunter himself is the game he designs for the toils. If
he be in pursuit of some bookish young gentleman, then he is always
a poring, he nourishes his reverend beard down to his heels, wears a
tattered cloak, affects the careless indifference of a philosopher, and
can now discourse of nothing under Plato’s triangles and rectangles. If
he chance to fall into the acquaintance of a drunken, idle debauchee
who has got an estate,

Then sly Ulysses throws away his rags,[100]

puts off his long robe, mows down his fruitless crop of beard, drinks
briskly, laughs modishly on the walks, and drolls handsomely upon
the philosophical fops of the town. And thus, they say, it happened
at Syracuse; for when Plato first arrived there and Dionysius was
wonderfully hot upon the study of philosophy, all the areas in the
king’s palace were full of nothing but dust and sand, by reason of the
great concourse of geometricians who came to draw their figures and
demonstrate there. But no sooner was Plato in disgrace at court, and
Dionysius finally fallen from philosophy to wine and women, trifles
and intemperance, than learning fell into a general disrepute, and
the whole body of the people, as if bewitched by some Circe or other,
became universally stupid, idle, and infatuated. Besides this, I
appeal to the practices of men notorious for flattery and popularity
to back my observation. Witness he who topped them all, Alcibiades,
who, when he dwelt at Athens, was as arch and witty as any Athenian
of them all, kept his stable of horses, played the good fellow, and
was universally obliging; and yet the same man at Sparta shaved close
to the skin, wore his cloak, and never bathed but in cold water. When
he sojourned in Thrace, he drank and fought like a Thracian; and
again, in Tissaphernes’s company in Asia, he acted the part of a soft,
arrogant, and voluptuous Asiatic. And thus, by an easy compliance
with the humors and customs of the people amongst whom he conversed,
he made himself master of their affections and interests. So did not
the brave Epaminondas nor Agesilaus, who, though they had to do with
great variety of men and manners, and cities of vastly different
politics, were still the same men, and everywhere, through the whole
circle of their conversation, maintained a port and character worthy of
themselves. And so was Plato the same man at Syracuse that he was in
the Academy, the same in Dionysius’s court that he was in Dion’s.

8. But he who will take the pains to act the dissembler himself, by
interchangeably decrying and extolling the same things, discourses, and
ways of living, will easily perceive that the opinions of a flatterer
are as mutable and inconstant as the colors of a polypus, that he is
never consonant to himself nor properly his own man; that all his
passions, his love and hatred, his joy and sorrow, are borrowed and
counterfeit; and that, in a word, like a mirror, he only receives
and represents the several faces or images of other men’s affections
and humors. Do but discommend one of your acquaintance a little in
his company, and he will tell you it is a wonder you never found him
out all this while, for his part he never fancied him in his life.
Change but your style and commend him, he presently swears you oblige
him in it, gives you a thousand thanks for the gentleman’s sake, and
believes your character of him to be just. Tell him you have thoughts
of altering your course of life, as for instance, to retire from all
public employs to privacy and ease; he immediately wishes that he had
retreated long ago from the hurry and drudgery of business and the
odium that attends it. Seem but again inclinable to an active life; Why
now, says he, you speak like yourself; leisure and ease are sweet, it
is true, but withal mean and inglorious. When you have thus trepanned
him, it would be proper to cashier him with some such reply as this:—

How now, my friend! What, quite another man![101]

I abhor a fellow who servilely complies with whatsoever I propose, and
keeps pace with me in all my motions,—my shadow can do that better than
yourself,—but my friend must deal plainly and impartially, and assist
me faithfully with his judgment. And thus you see one way of discerning
a flatterer from a friend.

9. Another difference observable betwixt them in the resemblance they
bear to each other is, that a true friend will not rashly commend
nor imitate every thing, but only what really deserves it; for, as
Sophocles says,

He shares with him his loves, but not his hates,[102]

and will scorn to bear any part with him in any base and dishonorable
actions, unless, as people sometimes catch blear eyes, he may
chance insensibly to contract some ill habit or other by the very
contagion of familiarity and conversation. Thus they say Plato’s
acquaintance learned his stoop, Aristotle’s his lisp, and Alexander’s
the inclination of his neck and the rapidity of his speech. For
some persons, ere they are aware, get a touch of the humors and
infirmities of those with whom they converse. But now as a true friend
endeavors only to copy the fairest originals, so, on the contrary,
the flatterer, like the chameleon, which puts on all colors but the
innocent white, being unable to reach those strokes of virtue which
are worth his imitation, takes care that no failure or imperfection
escape him. As unskilful painters, when they cannot hit the features
and air of a face, content themselves with the faint resemblance
in a wrinkle, a wart, or a scar, so he takes up with his friend’s
intemperance, superstition, cholericness, severity to his servants,
distrust of his relations and domestics or the like. For, besides
that a natural propensity to evil inclines him always to follow the
worst examples, he imagines his assuming other men’s vices will best
secure him from the suspicion of being disaffected towards them; for
their fidelity is often suspected who seem dissatisfied with faults
and wish a reformation. Which very thing lost Dion in the good opinion
of Dionysius, Samius in Philip’s, Cleomenes in Ptolemy’s, and at last
proved the occasion of their ruin. And therefore the flatterer pretends
not only to the good humor of a companion, but to the faithfulness of
a friend too, and would be thought to have so great a respect for you
that he cannot be disgusted at the very worst of your actions, being
indeed of the same make and constitution with yourself. Hence you shall
have him pretend a share in the most common casualties that befall
another, nay, in complaisance, feign even diseases themselves. In
company of those who are thick of hearing, he is presently half deaf,
and with the dim-sighted can see no more than they do. So the parasites
about Dionysius at an entertainment, to humor his blindness, stumbled
one upon another and jostled the dishes off his table.

But there are others who refine upon the former by a pretended
fellow-suffering in the more private concernments of life, whereby they
wriggle themselves deeper into the affections of those they flatter;
as, if they find a man unhappily married, or distrustful of his
children or domestics, they spare not their own family, but immediately
entertain you with some lamentable story of the hard fortune they have
met with in their children, their wife, their servants, or relations.
For, by the parallel circumstances they pretend to, they seem more
passionately concerned for the misfortunes of their friends, who, as if
they had already received some pawn and assurance of their fidelity,
blab forth those secrets which they cannot afterwards handsomely
retract, and dare not betray the least distrust of their new confidant
for the future. I myself knew a man who turned his wife out of doors
because a gentleman of his acquaintance divorced his, though the latter
lady smelt the intrigue afterwards by the messages the flatterer sent
to his wife after the pretended divorce and the private visits he was
observed to make her. So little did he understand the flatterer who
took these following verses for the description of a crab rather than
his:—

The shapeless thing’s all over paunch and gut:
Who can the monster’s mighty hunger glut?
It crawls on teeth, and with a watchful eye
Does into every secret corner pry.

For this is the true portraiture of those sharpers, who, as Eupolis
speaks, sponge upon their acquaintance for a dinner.

10. But we will reserve these remarks for a more proper place. In
the mean time I must not omit the other artifice observable in his
imitation, which is this: that if at any time he counterfeit the good
qualities of his friend, he immediately yields him the pre-eminence;
whereas there is no competition, no emulation or envy amongst true
friends, but whether they are equally accomplished or not, they bear
the same even unconcerned temper of mind towards each other. But the
flatterer, remembering that he is but to act another’s part, pretends
only to such strokes as fall short of the original, and is willing to
confess himself outdone in any thing but his vices, wherein alone he
claims the precedency to himself; as, if the man he is to wheedle be
difficult and morose, he is quite overrun with choler; if something
superstitious, he is a perfect enthusiast; if a little in love, for
his part he is most desperately smitten. I laughed heartily at such a
passage, says one; But I had like to have died with laughter, says the
other. But now in speaking of any laudable qualities, he inverts his
style; as, I can run fast enough, says he, but you perfectly fly. I can
sit an horse tolerably well, but alas! what’s that to this Hippocentaur
for good horsemanship? I have a tolerable good genius for poetry, and
am none of the worst versifiers of the age;

But thunder is the language of you Gods, not mine.

And thus at the same time he obliges his friend both in approving of
his abilities by his owning of them, and in confessing him incomparable
in his way by himself coming short of his example. These then are the
distinguishing characters of a friend and flatterer, as far as concerns
the counterfeit resemblance betwixt them.

11. But because, as we have before observed, it is common to them both
to please (for a good man is no less taken with the company of his
friends than an ill one is with a flatterer’s), let us discriminate
them here too. And the way will be to have an eye to the end to
which they direct the satisfaction they create, which may be thus
illustrated. Your perfumed oils have a fine odoriferous scent, and so,
it may be, have some medicines too; but with this difference, that
the former are prepared barely for the gratification of the sense,
whilst the other, besides their odor, purge, heal, and fatten. Again,
the colors used by painters are certainly very florid and the mixture
agreeable; and yet so it is in some medicinal compositions too. Wherein
then lies the difference? Why, in the end or use for which they are
designed, the one purely for pleasure the other for profit. In like
manner the civilities of one friend to another, besides the main point
of their honesty and mutual advantage, are always attended with an
overplus of delight and satisfaction. Nay, they can now and then
indulge themselves the liberty of an innocent diversion, a collation,
or a glass of wine, and, believe me, can be as cheerful and jocund as
the best; all which they use only as sauce, to give a relish to the
more serious and weighty concernments of life. To which purpose was
that of the poet,

With pleasing chat they did delight each other;

as likewise this too,

Nothing could part our pleasure or our love.[103]

But the whole business and design of a flatterer is continually to
entertain the company with some pastime or other, a little jest, a
story well told, or a comical action; and, in a word, he thinks he can
never overact the diverting part of conversation. Whereas the true
friend, proposing no other end to himself than the bare discharge of
his duty, is sometimes pleasant, and as often, it may be, disagreeable,
neither solicitously coveting the one, nor industriously avoiding the
other, if he judge it the more seasonable and expedient. For as a
physician, if need require, will throw in a little saffron or spikenard
to qualify his patient’s dose, and will now and then bathe him and feed
him up curiously, and yet again another time will prescribe him castor,

Or poley, which the strongest scent doth yield
Of all the physic plants which clothe the field,

or perhaps will oblige him to drink an infusion of hellebore,—proposing
neither the deliciousness of the one nor the nauseousness of the other
as his scope and design, but only conducting him by these different
methods to one and the same end, the recovery of his health,—in like
manner the real friend sometimes leads his man gently on to virtue by
kindness, by pleasing and extolling him, as he in Homer,

Dear Teucer, thou who art in high command
Thus draw the bow with thy unerring hand;

and as another speaking of Ulysses,

How can I doubt, while great Ulysses stands
To lend his counsel and assist our hands?

and again, when he sees correction requisite, he will check him
severely, as,

Whither, O Menelaus, wouldst thou run,
And tempt a fate which prudence bids thee shun?[104]

and perhaps he is forced another time to second his words with actions,
as Menedemus reclaimed his friend Asclepiades’s son, a dissolute and
debauched young gentleman, by shutting his doors upon him and not
vouchsafing to speak to him. And Arcesilaus forbade Battus his school
for having abused Cleanthes in a comedy of his, but after he had made
satisfaction and an acknowledgment of his fault, took him into favor
again. For we ought to grieve and afflict our friend with design merely
of serving him, not of making a rupture betwixt us, and must apply our
reprehensions only as pungent and acute medicines, with no other intent
than the recovery of the patient. And therefore a friend—like a skilful
musician who, to tune his instrument, winds up one string and lets
down another—grants some things and refuses others according as their
honesty or usefulness prompt him, whereby he often pleases, but is sure
always to profit; whereas the parasite, who is continually upon the
same humoring string, knows not how to let fall a cross word or commit
a disobliging action, but servilely complies with all your desires,
and is always in the tune you ask for. And therefore, as Xenophon
reports of Agesilaus that he took some delight in being praised by
those who would upon occasion dispraise him too, so ought we to judge
that only he rejoices and pleases us really as a friend, who will,
when need requires, thwart and contradict us; we must suspect their
conversation who aim at nothing but our gratification, without the
least intermixture of reprehension; and indeed we ought to have ready
upon such occasions that repartee of a Lacedaemonian who, hearing King
Charillus highly extolled for an excellent person, asked, How he could
be so good a man, who was never severe to an ill one?

12. They tell us that gad-flies creep into the ears of bulls, and ticks
into those of dogs. But I am sure the parasite lays so close siege and
sticks so fast to the ears of the ambitious with the repeated praises
of their worth, that it is no easy matter to shake him off again. And
therefore it highly concerns them to have their apprehensions awake
and upon the guard, critically to remark whether the high characters
such men lavish out are intended for the person or the thing they would
be thought to commend. And we may indeed suppose them more peculiarly
designed for the things themselves, if they bestow them on persons
absent rather than present; if they covet and aspire after the same
qualities themselves which they magnify in others; if they admire the
same perfections in the rest of mankind as well as in us, and are never
found to falter and belie, either in word or action, the sentiments
they have owned. And, what is the surest criterion in this case, we
are to examine whether or no we are not really troubled at or ashamed
of the commission of those very things for which they applaud us, and
could not wish that we had said or acted the quite contrary; for our
own consciences, which are above the reach of passion and will not be
put upon by all the sly artifices of flattery, will witness against us
and spurn at an undeserved commendation. But I know not how it comes
to pass, that several persons had rather be pitied than comforted in
adversity; and when they have committed a fault, look upon those as
enemies and informers who endeavor to chide and lecture them into a
sense of their guilt, but caress and embrace them as friends who soothe
them up in their vices. Indeed they who continue their applauses to so
inconsiderable a thing as a single action, a wise saying, or a smart
jest, do only a little present mischief; but they who from single acts
proceed to debauch even the habits of the mind with their immoderate
praises are like those treacherous servants who, not content to rob
the common heap in the granary, filch even that which was chosen
and reserved for seed. For, whilst they entitle vice to the name of
virtue, they corrupt that prolific principle of action, the genius
and disposition of the soul, and poison the fountain whence the whole
stream of life derives. Thucydides observes, that in the time of war
and sedition the names of good and evil are wont to be confounded
according to men’s judgment of circumstances; as, fool-hardiness is
called a generous espousal of a friend’s quarrel, a provident delay
is nicknamed cowardice, modesty a mere pretext for unmanliness, a
prudent slow inspection into things downright laziness.[105] In like
manner, if you observe it, a flatterer terms a profuse man liberal,
a timorous man wary, a mad fellow quick and prompt, a stingy miser
frugal, an amorous youngster kind and good-natured, a passionate proud
fool stout, and a mean-spirited slave courteous and observing. As
Plato somewhere remarks, that a lover who is always a flatterer of his
beloved object styles a flat nose lovely and graceful, an hawk nose
princely, the black manly, and the fair the offspring of the Gods; and
observes particularly that the appellation of honey-pale is nothing but
the daub of a gallant who is willing to set off his mistress’s pale
complexion.[106] Now indeed an ugly fellow bantered into an opinion
that he is handsome, or a little man magnified into tall and portly,
cannot lie long under the mistake nor receive any great injury by the
cheat; but when vice is extolled by the name of virtue, so that a man
is induced to sin not only without regret but with joy and triumph,
and is hardened beyond the modesty of a blush for his enormities, this
sort of flattery, I say, has been fatal even to whole kingdoms. It
was this that ruined Sicily, by styling the tyranny of Dionysius and
Phalaris nothing but justice and a hatred of villanous practices. It
was this that overthrew Egypt, by palliating the king’s effeminacy,
his yellings, his enthusiastic rants, and his beating of drums, with
the more plausible names of true religion and the worship of the
Gods. It was this that had very nigh ruined the stanch Roman temper,
by extenuating the voluptuousness, the luxury, the sumptuous shows,
and public profuseness of Antony, into the softer terms of humanity,
good nature, and the generosity of a gentleman who knew how to use the
greatness of his fortune. What but the charms of flattery made Ptolemy
turn piper and fiddler? What else put on Nero’s buskins and brought
him on the stage? Have we not known several princes, if they sung a
tolerable treble, termed Apollos; when they drank stoutly, styled
Bacchuses; and upon wrestling, fencing, or the like, immediately dubbed
by the name of Hercules, and hurried on by those empty titles to the
commission of those acts which were infinitely beneath the dignity of
their character?

13. And therefore it will be then more especially our concern to look
about us when a flatterer is upon the strain of praising; which he is
sensible enough of, and accordingly avoids all occasion of suspicion
when he attacks us on that side. If indeed he meets with a tawdry fop,
or a dull country clown in a leathern jacket, he plays upon him with
all the liberty imaginable; as Struthias by way of flattery insulted
and triumphed over the sottishness of Bias, when he told him that he
had out-drunk King Alexander himself, and that he was ready to die of
laughter at his encounter with the Cyprian. But if he chance to fall
upon an apprehensive man, who can presently smoke a design, especially
if he thinks he has an eye upon him and stands upon his guard, he does
not immediately assault him with an open panegyric, but first fetches a
compass, and softly winds about him, till he has in some measure tamed
the untractable creature and brought it to his hand. For he either
tells him what high characters he has heard of him abroad (introducing,
as the rhetoricians do, some third person), how upon the exchange the
other day he happily overheard some strangers and persons of great
gravity and worth, who spake extreme honorably of him and professed
themselves much his admirers; or else he forges some frivolous and
false accusation of him, and then coming in all haste, as if he had
heard it really reported, asks him seriously, if he can call to mind
where he said or did such a thing. And immediately upon his denial of
the matter of fact, which he has reason enough to expect, he takes
occasion to fall upon the subject of his commendation; I wondered
indeed, says he, to hear that you should calumniate your friend, who
never used to speak ill of your enemies; that you should endeavor to
rob another man of his estate, who so generously spend your own.

14. Others again, like painters who enhance the lustre and beauty
of a curious piece by the shades which surround it, slyly extol and
encourage men in their vices by deriding and railing at their contrary
virtues. Thus, in the company of the debauched, the covetous, and the
extortioner, they run down temperance and modesty as mere rusticity;
and justice and contentment with our present condition argue nothing in
their phrase but a dastardly spirit and an impotence to action. If they
fall into the acquaintance of lubbers who love laziness and ease, they
stick not to explode the necessary administration of public affairs
as a troublesome intermeddling in other men’s business, and a desire
to bear office as an useless empty thirst after a name. To wheedle in
with an orator, they scout a philosopher; and who so gracious as they
with the jilts of the town, by laughing at wives who are faithful to
their husbands’ beds as impotent and country-bred? And, what is the
most egregious stratagem of all the rest, the flatterer shall traduce
himself rather than want a fair opportunity to commend another; as
wrestlers put their body in a low posture, that they may the better
worst their adversaries. I am a very coward at sea, says he, impatient
of any fatigue, and cannot digest the least ill language; but my good
friend here fears no colors, can endure all hardness, is an admirable
good man, bears all things with great patience and evenness of temper.
If he meets with one who abounds in his own sense and affects to
appear rigid and singular in his judgment, and, as an argument of the
rectitude and steadiness thereof, is always telling you of that of
Homer,

Let not your praise or dispraise lavish be,
Good Diomedes, when you speak of me,[107]

he applies a new engine to move this great weight. To such a one he
imparts some of his private concerns, as being willing to advise with
the ablest counsel: he has indeed a more intimate acquaintance with
others, but he was forced to trouble him at present: for to whom should
we poor witless men have recourse (says he) when we stand in need of
advice? Or whom else should we trust? And as soon as he has delivered
his opinion, whether it be to the purpose or not, he takes his leave of
him with a seeming satisfaction, as if he had received an answer from
an oracle. Again, if he perceives a man pretends to be master of a
style, he presently presents him with something of his own composing,
requesting him to peruse and correct it. Thus Mithridates could no
sooner set up for a physician, than some of his acquaintance desired to
be cut and cauterized by him,—a piece of flattery that extended beyond
the fallacy of bare words,—they imagining that he must needs take it as
an argument of their great opinion of his skill, that they durst trust
themselves in his hands.

For things divine take many shapes.[108]

Now to discover the cheat which these insinuations of our own worth
might put upon us (a thing that requires no ordinary circumspection),
the best way will be to give him a very absurd advice, and to
animadvert as impertinently as may be upon his works when he submits
them to your censure. For if he makes no reply, but grants and approves
of all you assert, and applauds every period with the eulogy of Very
right! Incomparably well!—then you have trepanned him, and it is plain
that, though

He counsel asked, he played another game,
To swell you with the opinion of a name.

15. But to proceed. As some have defined painting to be mute poetry, so
there is a sort of silent flattery which has its peculiar commendation.
For as hunters are then surest of their game when they pass under the
disguise of travellers, shepherds or husbandmen, and seem not at all
intent upon their sport; so the eulogies of a parasite never take more
effectually than when he seems least of all to commend you. For he who
rises up to a rich man when he comes in company, or who, having begun
a motion in the Senate, suddenly breaks off and gives some leading man
the liberty of speaking his sense first in the point, such a man’s
silence more effectually shows the deference he pays the other’s
judgment than if he had avowedly proclaimed it. And hereupon you shall
have them always placed in the boxes at the play-house, and perched
upon the highest seats at other public entertainments; not that they
think them suitable to their quality, but merely for the opportunity of
gratifying great men by giving them place. Hence it is likewise, that
they open first in all solemn and public assemblies, only that they
may give place to another as an abler speaker, and they retract their
opinion immediately, if any person of authority, riches, or quality
contradict them. So that you may perceive all their concessions,
cringes, and respects to be but mere courtship and complaisance, by
this easy observation, that they are usually paid to riches, honor, or
the like, rather than to age, art, virtue, or other personal endowments.

Thus dealt not Apelles with Megabyzus (one of the Persian nobility),
who pretending once to talk I know not what about lines, shades, and
other things peculiar to his art, the painter could not but take him
up, telling him that his apprentices yonder, who were grinding colors,
gazed strangely upon him, admiring his gold and purple ornaments, while
he held his tongue, but now could not choose but titter to hear him
offer at a discourse upon an argument so much out of his sphere. And
when Croesus asked Solon his opinion of felicity, he told him flatly,
that he looked upon Tellus, an honest though obscure Athenian, and
Biton and Cleobis, as happier than he. But the flatterer will have
kings, governors, and men of estates, not only the most signally happy,
but the most eminently knowing, the most virtuous, and the most prudent
of mankind.

16. And now some cannot endure to hear the Stoics, who centre all
true riches, generosity, nobility, and royalty itself in the person
of a wise man; but with the flatterer it is the man of money that is
both orator and poet, and, if he pleases, painter and fiddler too,
a good wrestler, an excellent footman, or any thing, for they never
stand with him for the victory in those engagements; as Crisson,
who had the honor to run with Alexander, let him designedly win the
race, which the king being told of afterwards was highly disgusted
at him. And therefore I like the observation of Carneades, who used
to say that young princes and noblemen never arrived to a tolerable
perfection in any thing they learned, except riding; for their
preceptors spoil them at school by extolling all their performances,
and their wrestling-masters by always taking the foil; whereas the
horse, who knows no distinction betwixt a private man and a magistrate,
betwixt the rich and the poor, will certainly throw his rider if he
knows not how to sit him, let him be of what quality he pleases. And
therefore it was but impertinently said of Bion upon this subject, that
he who could praise his ground into a good crop were to blame if he
bestowed any other tillage upon it. ’Tis granted: nor is it improper
to commend a man, if you do him any real kindness thereby. But here is
the disparity: that a field cannot be made worse by any commendations
bestowed upon it, whereas a man immoderately praised is puffed up,
burst, and ruined by it.

17. Thus much then for the point of praising; proceed we in the next
place to treat of freedom in their reprehensions. And indeed, it were
but reasonable that,—as Patroclus put on Achilles’s armor and led his
war-horse out into the field, yet durst not for all that venture to
wield his spear,—so, though the flatterer wear all the other badges
and ensigns of a friend, he should not dare to counterfeit the plain
frankness of his discourse, as being “a great, massy, and substantial
weapon,” peculiar to him.[109]

But because, to avoid that scandal and offence which their drunken
bouts, their little jests, and ludicrous babling humor might otherwise
create, they sometimes put on the face of gravity, and flatter under
the vizard of a frown, dropping in now and then a word of correction
and reproof, let us examine this cheat too amongst the rest.

And indeed I can compare that trifling insignificant liberty of speech
to which he pretends to nothing better than that sham Hercules which
Menander introduces in one of his comedies, with a light hollow club
upon his shoulder; for, as women’s pillows, which seem sufficiently
stuffed to bear up their heads, yield and sink under their weight,
so this counterfeit freedom in a flatterer’s conversation swells
big and promises fair, that when it shrinks and contracts itself
it may draw those in with it who lay any stress upon its outward
appearance. Whereas the genuine and friendly reprehension fixes upon
real criminals, causing them grief and trouble indeed, but only what
is wholesome and salutary; like honey that corrodes but yet cleanses
the ulcerous parts of the body, and is otherwise both pleasant and
profitable. But of this in its proper place. We shall discourse at
present of the flatterer who affects a morose, angry, and inexorable
behavior towards all but those upon whom he designs, is peevish and
difficult towards his servants, animadverts severely upon the failures
of his relations and domestics, neither admires nor respects a stranger
but superciliously contemns him, pardons no man, but by stories and
complaints exasperates one against another, thinking by these means to
acquire the character of an irreconcilable enemy to all manner of vice,
that he may be thought one who would not spare his favorites themselves
upon occasion, and would neither act nor speak any thing out of a mean
and dastardly complaisance.

And if at any time he undertakes his friend, he feigns himself a mere
stranger to his real and considerable crimes; but if he catch him in
some petty trifling peccadillo, there he takes his occasion to rant
him terribly and thunder him severely off; as, if he see any of his
goods out of order, if his house be not very convenient, if his beard
be not shaven or his clothes unfashionable, if his dog or his horse
be not well looked after. But if he slight his parents, neglect his
children, treat his wife scornfully, his friends and acquaintance
disrespectfully, and squander away his estate, here he dares not open
his mouth, and it is the safest way to hold his tongue. Just as if the
master of a wrestling-school should indulge his young champion scholar
in drinking and wenching, and yet rattle him about his oil-cruise and
body-brush; or as if a schoolmaster should severely reprove a boy
for some little fault in his pen or writing-book, but take no notice
of the barbarisms and solecisms in his language. For the parasite is
like him who hearing a ridiculous impertinent orator finds no fault
with his discourse but delivery, blaming him only for having hurt his
throat with drinking cold water; or like one who, being to peruse and
correct some pitiful scribble, falls foul only upon the coarseness of
the paper and the blots and negligence of the transcriber. Thus the
parasites about Ptolemy, when he pretended to learning, would wrangle
with him till midnight about the propriety of an expression, a verse,
or a story; but not a word all this while of his cruelty, insults,
superstition, and oppressions of the people. Just as if a chirurgeon
should pare a man’s nails or cut his hair, to cure him of a fistula,
wen, or other carnous excrescence.

18. But there are others behind, who outdo all the subtlety of
the former, such as can claw and please, even whilst they seem to
reprehend. Thus when Alexander had bestowed some considerable reward
upon a jester, Agis the Argive, through mere envy and vexation, cried
out upon it as a most absurd action; which the king overhearing, he
turned him about in great indignation at the insolence, saying, What’s
that you prate, sirrah? Why truly, replied the man, I must confess,
I am not a little troubled to observe, that all you great men who
are descended from Jupiter take a strange delight in flatterers and
buffoons; for as Hercules had his Cercopians and Bacchus his Silenuses
about him, so I see your majesty is pleased to have a regard for such
pleasant fellows too. And one time when Tiberius Caesar was present
at the senate, there stood up a certain fawning counsellor, asserting
that all free-born subjects ought to have the liberty of speaking their
sense freely, and should not dissemble or conceal any thing that they
might conceive beneficial to the public; who, having thus awakened the
attention of his audience, silence being made, and Tiberius impatient
to hear the sequel of the man’s discourse, pursued it in this manner:
I must tell you of a fault, Caesar, said he, for which we universally
blame you, though no man yet has taken the confidence to speak it
openly. You neglect yourself, endanger your sacred person by your too
much labor and care, night and day, for the public. And he having
harangued several things to the same effect, it is reported that
Cassius Severus the orator subjoined: This man’s freedom of speech will
ruin him.

19. Such artifices as these, I confess, are not very pernicious, but
there remains one of a most dangerous consequence to weak men; and that
is when a flatterer fastens those vices upon them which are directly
contrary to those they are really guilty of. As Himerius, an Athenian
parasite, upbraided one of the most miserable and stingy misers of the
whole town with carelessness and prodigality, telling him he was afraid
he should live to see the day when both he and his children should go
a begging. Or, on the contrary, when they object niggardliness and
parsimony to one that is lavish and profuse, as Titus Petronius did
to Nero. Or when they advise arbitrary and tyrannical princes to lay
aside their too much moderation and their unprofitable and unseasonable
clemency. And like to these are they who shall pretend to be afraid of
a half-witted idiot, as of some notable shrewd fellow; and shall tax
an ill-natured censorious man, if at any time he speak honorably of
a person of worth, of being too lavish in his commendations. You are
always, say they, praising men that deserve it not; for who is he, or
what remarkable thing did he ever say or do? But they have yet a more
signal opportunity of exercising their talent, when they meet with any
difference betwixt lovers or friends; for if they see brothers quarrel,
or children despise their parents, or husbands jealous of their
wives, they neither admonish them nor blame them for it, but inflame
the difference. You don’t understand yourself, say they; you are the
occasion of all this clutter by your own soft and submissive behavior.
If there chance to have happened some little love-skirmish betwixt a
miss and her gallant, then the flatterer interposes boldly and adds
fresh fuel to the expiring flame, taking the gentleman to task, and
telling him how many things he has done which looked a little hard,
were not kind, and deserved a chiding.

Ungrateful man! can you forget her charms,
And former soft embraces in her arms?[110]

Thus Antony’s friends persuaded him, when he was smitten with his
beloved Cleopatra, that she doted on him, still calling him haughty and
hard-hearted man. She, said they, has stripped herself of the glories
of a crown and former grandeur, and now languishes with the love of
you, attending the motion of your camp in the poor sordid figure of a
concubine.

But you have steeled your heart, and can unmoved
Behold her grief, whom once you so much loved.[111]

Now he was strangely pleased to hear of his little unkindness to his
mistress, and was more taken with such a chiding than with the highest
character they could have given him; but was not sensible that,
under the color of a friendly admonition, they really corrupted and
debauched him. For such a rebuke as this is just like the bites of a
lecherous woman, for it only tickles and provokes, and pleases even
whilst it pains you. And as pure wine taken singly is an excellent
antidote against hemlock, but if mixed with it renders the poison
incurable, because the heat of the wine quickens its circulation to the
heart; so some rascally fellows, knowing very well that the liberty of
reproving a friend is a quality very hardly compatible with flattery,
and, as I may say, the best remedy against it, mix them both together,
and flatter you under the very color and pretext of reprimanding you.

Upon the whole thereof, Bias seems not to have answered him very
pertinently, who asked him which he thought was the most hurtful
animal, when he replied, Of wild creatures a tyrant, and of tame
ones a flatterer. For he might have answered more accurately, that
some flatterers indeed are tame creatures, those shirks who ply
about your bath and your table; but they whose calumnies, malignity,
and inquisitive meddling humor, like so many gins and snares, reach
the ladies’ very closets and bed-chambers, are wild, savage, and
untractable.

20. Now one way of arming ourselves against these assaults will be
always to remember that,—since our souls are made up of two different
parts, the one sincere, honest, and reasonable, the other brutish,
false, and governed by passion,—the friend always adapts his advice
and admonitions to the improvement of the better part (like a good
physician, who preserves and advances an healthful constitution where
he finds it), whilst the flatterer claws and tickles the irrational
part of the man only, debauching it from the rules of right reason by
the repeated suggestion of soft and sensual delights. For as there are
some sorts of meat which assimilate neither with the blood nor with
the spirits, and invigorate neither the nerves nor the marrow, but
only provoke lust, swell the paunch, and breed putrid flabby flesh;
so he who shall give himself the labor to observe will find that the
discourses of a flatterer contribute nothing to the improvement of
our prudence and understanding, but either only entertain us with
the pleasure of some love-intrigue, or make us indiscreetly angry or
envious, or blow us up into an empty troublesome opinion of ourselves,
or increase our sorrows by pretending to share in them; or else they
exasperate any inbred naughtiness that is in us, or our illiberality
or distrustfulness, making them harsh, timorous, and jealous, with
idle malicious stories, hints, and conjectures of his own. For he
always fastens upon and pampers some distemper of the mind, growing,
like a botch or bile, upon its inflamed or putrid part only. Are you
angry? Revenge yourself, says he. Covet you any thing? Have it. Are you
afraid? Fly. Suspect you this or that? Believe it.

But if we find it something difficult to discover him in these attempts
upon our passions, because they often violently overpower all the
forces of our reason to the contrary, we may then trace him in other
instances of his knavery; for he always acts consonant to himself. As,
if you are afraid of a surfeit and thereupon are in suspense about your
bath and diet, a friend indeed will advise you to act cautiously and
take care of your health; but the flatterer persuades you to the bath,
bids you feed freely and not starve yourself with mortification. If he
observes you want briskness and spirit for action, as being unwilling
to undergo the fatigue of a journey or a voyage, he will tell you
presently, there is no haste; the business may be well enough deferred,
or else transacted by proxy. If at any time you have promised to lend
or give a friend a sum of money, and upon second thoughts gladly
would, and yet are ashamed to retract your word, the flatterer puts
his advice in the worse scale, and inclines the balance to the saving
side, and strips you of your squeamish modesty, telling you that you
ought not to be so prodigal, who live at great expense and have others
to relieve besides him. And therefore, unless we be mere strangers to
ourselves,—to our own covetousness, shamelessness, or timidity,—the
flatterer cannot easily escape our discovery; for he is the great
patron of these disorderly passions, endeavoring always to wind us up
to excesses of this kind. But enough of this.

21. Let us in the next place discourse of the useful and kind offices
which the flatterer seems cheerfully ready upon every occasion to
perform, thereby rendering the disparity betwixt him and the true
friend extremely perplexed and intricate.

For the temper of a friend, like the language of truth, is (as
Euripides says) sincere, natural, without paint or varnish; but that
of a flatterer, as it is corrupt and diseased in itself, so stands
in need of many curious and exquisite remedies to correct it.[112]
And therefore you shall have friends upon an accidental rencounter,
without either giving or receiving a formal salute, content themselves
to speak their mutual kindness and familiarity in a nod and a smile;
but the flatterer pursues you, runs to meet you, and extends his hand
long before he comes at you; and if you chance but to see and salute
him first, he swears you must excuse his rudeness, and will produce
you witness that he did not see you, if you please. Thus again, a
friend dwells not upon every trifling punctilio, is not ceremonious
and punctual in the transacting of business, is not inquisitive, and
does not intrude into every piece of service; but the parasite is all
obedience, all perpetual indefatigable industry, admits no rival in his
services, but will wait your commands, which if you lay not upon him,
he seems mightily afflicted, the unhappiest man in the world!

22. Now these observations are argument enough to convince a man of any
tolerable sense, that the friendship such men pretend to is not really
virtuous and chaste, but rather a sort of impudent whorish love that
obtrudes its embraces upon you.

But, to be more particular, let us first examine the disparity betwixt
their promises. For our forefathers well observed, that the offers of a
friend run in such terms as these:

If I can serve you, sir, if your request
Be feasible by me, I’ll do my best;

but the flatterer’s thus:

Command me freely what you will, I’ll do it.[113]

For the comedians introduce such brave promises as these:

Come, sir, let me but fight that fellow there;
I’ll beat him soft as sponge or jellies are.

Besides, no real friend will assist in the execution of a design,
unless, being first advised with, he approve of it as either honest or
useful. Whereas the flatterer, though permitted to consult and give his
opinion about an undertaking, not only out of a paltry desire to comply
with and gratify his friend at any rate, but lest he should be looked
upon as disaffected to the business, servilely closes with and advances
his proposal, how unreasonable soever. For there are few rich men or
princes of this mind:

Give me a friend, though a poor beggar he,
Or meaner than the meanest beggar be,
If he his thoughts but freely will impart,
And boldly speak the language of his heart;[114]

for they, like actors in a tragedy, must have a chorus of their friends
to join with them in the concert, or else the claps of the pit to
encourage them. Whereupon Merope in the tragedy speaks thus:

Make choice of those for friends, who never knew
The arts of wheedling and betraying you;
But those poor rascals never entertain,
Who please you only with design to gain.[115]

But alas! they invert the counsel, and abominate those who deal
freely with them and advise them obstinately for the best, whilst
pitiful cringing cheats and impostors are admitted not only into their
houses, but into their affections and the nearest concernments of
their life. You shall have some of them indeed more plain and simple
than the rest, who confess themselves unworthy to consult about such
weighty affairs, but are ready to serve you in the executive part
of a design. But the more subtle hypocrite comes in at the consult,
knits his brows, declares his consent by the gravity of a look or a
nod, but speaks never a word, unless perchance, when the great man
delivers his opinion, he cries, Lord! sir, you prevented me; I was just
going to say so. For, as the mathematicians tell us that surfaces and
lines, which are incorporeal and creatures of the understanding only,
are neither bended nor moved nor extended of themselves, but are so
affected together with the bodies whose extremities they are; so you
shall observe the flatterer attends only the motion of another’s sense,
opinion, or passion, without any principle of action in himself. So
that the disparity betwixt them thus far is easily discernible.

And yet more easily in the manner they perform their good offices. For
the kindnesses of a friend, like an animate creature, have their most
proper virtues deep within, without any parade or pageantry on the
outside. Nay, many times, as a faithful physician cures his patient
when he least knows of it, so a true friend, either present or absent,
as occasion serves, is solicitous about your concerns, when perhaps
you know nothing of it. Such was the excellent Arcesilaus, as in his
other actions, so particularly in his kindness to Apelles, native of
Chios, whom finding extremely indigent in his sickness, he repeated
his visit to him with twenty drachms in his pocket; and sitting by his
bedside, You have got nothing here, said he, but Empedocles’s elements,
fire, water, earth, and the surrounding air; neither, methinks, do you
lie easily. And with that, stirring up his pillow, he put the money
privately under his head; which when the good old woman his nurse found
and in great wonder acquainted Apelles with, Aye, says he, smiling a
little, this is a piece of Arcesilaus’s thievery. And the saying that
children resemble their parents is found true also in philosophy.
For when Cephisocrates was impeached of high treason, and Lacydes,
an intimate acquaintance of Arcesilaus, with several others of his
friends, stood by him at his trial, the counsel for the state desired
that the prisoner’s ring, wherein lay the principal evidence against
him, might be produced in court; which Cephisocrates hearing dropped
it softly off his finger, and Lacydes observing it set his foot upon
it and buried it in the ground. Whereupon being acquitted, and going
afterwards to pay his respects and thanks to his judges, one of them
(who, it seems, had taken notice of the passages) told him that his
thanks were owing to Lacydes, and so related the whole story, when yet
Lacydes had never mentioned it.

Thus I am verily persuaded the Gods confer several benefits upon us
which we are not sensible of, upon no other motive in the world than
the mere pleasure and satisfaction they take in acts of kindness and
beneficence.

But on the contrary, the seemingly good offices of a flatterer
have nothing of that sincerity and integrity, that simplicity and
ingenuousness, which recommend a kindness, but are always attended
with bustle and noise, hurry, sweat and contracting the brow, to
enhance your opinion of the great pains he has taken for you; like a
picture drawn in gaudy colors, with folded torn garments, and full of
angles and wrinkles, to make us believe it an elaborate piece and done
to the life.

Besides, the flatterer is so extremely troublesome in recounting the
weary steps he has taken, the cares he has had upon him, the persons he
has been forced to disoblige, with a thousand other inconveniencies he
has labored under upon your account, that you will be apt to say, The
business was never worth all this din and clutter about it.

For a kindness once upbraided loses its grace, turns a burden, and
becomes intolerable. But the flatterer not only reproaches us with his
services already past, but at the very instant of their performance;
whereas, if a friend be obliged to speak of any civility done another,
he modestly mentions it indeed, but attributes nothing to himself.
Thus, when the Lacedaemonians supplied the people of Smyrna in great
scarcity of provisions, and they gratefully resented and extolled the
kindness; Why, replied the Spartans, it was no such great matter, we
only robbed ourselves and our cattle of a dinner. For a favor thus
bestowed is not only free and ingenuous, but more acceptable to the
receiver, because he imagines his benefactor conferred it on him
without any great prejudice to himself.

23. But the temper of a flatterer is discernible from that of a
friend not only in the easiness of his promises and the troublesome
impertinence that attends his good offices, but more signally in this,
that the one is ready to promote any base and unworthy action, the
other those only which are fair and honest. The one labors to please,
the other to profit you. For a friend must not, as Gorgias would have
him, beg another’s assistance in a just undertaking, and then think to
compensate the civility by contributing to several that are unjust.

In wisdom, not in folly, should they join.

And if, after all, he cannot prevail upon him, he may disengage himself
with the reply of Phocion to Antipater; Sir, I cannot be both your
friend and your flatterer,—that is, Your friend and not your friend
at the same time. For we ought to be assistant to him in his honest
endeavors indeed, but not in his knaveries; in his counsels, not in
his tricks; in appearing as evidence for him, but not in a cheat;
and must bear a share in his misfortunes, but not in his acts of
injustice. For if a man ought not to be as much as conscious of any
unworthiness in his friend, how much less will it become him to partake
in it? Therefore, as the Lacedaemonians, defeated and treating of
articles of peace with Antipater, prayed him to command them any thing,
howsoever grievous and burthensome to the subject, provided it were not
base and dishonorable; so a friend, if you want his assistance in a
chargeable, dangerous, and laborious enterprise, embarks in the design
cheerfully and without reserve; but if such as will not stand with
his reputation and honor, he fairly desires to be excused. Whereas,
on the contrary, if you offer to put a flatterer upon a difficult or
hazardous employment, he shuffles you off and begs your pardon. For but
sound him, as you rap a vessel to try whether it be whole or cracked,
full or empty; and he shams you off with the noise of some paltry,
frivolous excuses. But engage him in any mean, sordid, and inglorious
service, abuse him, kick him, trample on him, he bears all patiently
and knows no affront. For as the ape, who cannot keep the house like
a dog or bear a burden like an horse or plough like an ox, serves to
be abused, to play the buffoon, and to make sport; so the parasite,
who can neither plead your cause nor be your counsel nor espouse your
quarrel, as being averse from all painful and good offices, denies you
in nothing that may contribute to your pleasure, turns pander to your
lust, pimps for a whore, provides you an handsome entertainment, looks
that your bill be reasonable, and sneaks to your miss; but he shall
treat your relations with disrespect and impudently turn your wife out
of doors, if you commission him. So that you may easily discover him in
this particular. For put him upon the most base and dirty actions; he
will not spare his own pains, provided he can but gratify you.

24. There remains yet another way to discover him by his inclinations
towards your intimates and familiars. For there is nothing more
agreeable to a true and cordial acquaintance than to love and to be
beloved with many; and therefore he always sedulously endeavors to
gain his friend the affections and esteem of other men. For being
of opinion that all things ought to be in common amongst friends,
he thinks nothing ought to be more so than they themselves. But the
faithless, the adulterate friend of base alloy, who is conscious to
himself of the disservice he does true friendship by that false coin
of it which he puts upon us, is naturally full of emulation and envy,
even towards those of his own profession, endeavoring to outdo them in
their common talent of babbling and buffoonery, whilst he reveres and
cringes to his betters, whom he dares no more vie with than a footman
with a Lydian chariot, or lead (to use Simonides’s expression) with
refined gold. Therefore this light and empty counterfeit, finding he
wants weight when put into the balance against a solid and substantial
friend, endeavors to remove him as far as he can, like him who, having
painted a cock extremely ill, commanded his servant to take the
original out of sight; and if he cannot compass his design, then he
proceeds to compliment and ceremony, pretending outwardly to admire
him as a person far beyond himself, whilst by secret calumnies he
blackens and undermines him. And if these chance to have galled and
fretted him only and have not thoroughly done their work, then he
betakes himself to the advice of Medius, that arch parasite and enemy
to the Macedonian nobility, and chief of all that numerous train which
Alexander entertained in his court. This man taught his disciples to
slander boldly and push home their calumnies; for, though the wound
might probably be cured and skinned over again, yet the teeth of
slander would be sure to leave a scar behind them. By these scars, or
(to speak more properly) gangrenes and cancers of false accusations,
fell the brave Callisthenes, Parmenio, and Philotas; whilst Alexander
himself became an easy prey to an Agnon, Bagoas, Agesias, and
Demetrius, who tricked him up like a barbarian statue, and paid the
mortal the adoration due to a God. So great a charm is flattery, and,
as it seems, the greatest with those we think the greatest men; for
the exalted thoughts they entertain of themselves, and the desire of a
universal concurrence in the same opinion from others, both add courage
to the flatterer and credit to his impostures. Hills and mountains
indeed are not easily taken by stratagem or ambuscade; but a weak mind,
swollen big and lofty by fortune, birth, or the like, lies naked to the
assaults of every mean and petty aggressor.

25. And therefore we repeat here what we advised at our entrance into
this discourse, that we cashier every vain opinion of ourselves and
all self-love. For their inbred flattery only disposes and prepares
us to a more favorable reception of that from without. For, if we did
but square out actions according to the famous oracular precept of
knowing ourselves, rate things according to their true intrinsic value,
and withal, reflecting upon our own nature and education, consider
what gross imperfections and failures mix with our words, actions,
and affections, we should not lie so open to the attempts of every
flatterer who designs upon us. For even Alexander himself, being
reminded of his mortality by two things especially, the necessity of
sleep and the use of women, began to stagger in the opinion they had
made him conceive of his godhead. And did we in like manner but take an
impartial survey of those troubles, lapses, and infirmities incident to
our nature, we should find we stood in no need of a friend to praise
and extol our virtues, but of one rather that would chide and reprimand
us for our vices. For first, there are but few who will venture to deal
thus roundly and impartially with their friends, and fewer yet who
know the art of it, men generally mistaking railing and ill language
for a decent and friendly reproof. And then a chiding, like any other
physic, if ill-timed, racks and torments you to no purpose, and works
in a manner the same effect with pain that flattery does with pleasure.
For an unseasonable reprehension may be equally mischievous with an
unseasonable commendation, and force your friend to throw himself upon
the flatterer; like water which, leaving the too precipitous and rugged
hills, rolls down upon the humble valleys below. And therefore we ought
to qualify and allay the sharpness of our reproofs with a due temper of
candor and moderation,—as we would soften light which is too powerful
for a distempered eye,—lest our friends, being plagued and ranted upon
every trivial occasion, should at last fly to the flatterer’s shade for
their ease and quiet. For all vice, Philopappus, is to be corrected
by an intermediate virtue, and not by its contrary extreme, as some
do who, to shake off that sheepish bashfulness which hangs upon their
natures, learn to be impudent; to lay aside their country breeding,
endeavor to be comical; to avoid the imputation of softness and
cowardice, turn bullies; out of an abhorrence of superstition, commence
atheists; and rather than be reputed fools, play the knave; forcing
their inclinations, like a crooked stick, to the opposite extreme for
want of skill to set them straight.

But it is highly rude to endeavor to avoid the suspicion of flattery
by only being insignificantly troublesome, and it argues an ungenteel,
unconversable temper in a man to show his just abhorrency of mean
and servile ends in his friendship only by a sour and disagreeable
behavior; like the freedman in the comedy, who would needs persuade
himself that his railing accusation fell within the limits of that
freedom in discourse which every one had right to with his equals.
Since therefore it is absurd to incur the suspicion of a flatterer by
an over-obliging and obsequious humor, and as absurd, on the other
hand, in endeavoring to decline it by an immoderate latitude in our
apprehensions, to lose the enjoyments and salutary admonitions of a
friendly conversation, and since the measures of what is just and
proper in this, as in other things, are to be taken from decency and
moderation; the nature of the argument seems to require me to conclude
it with a discourse upon this subject.

26. Now seeing this liberty of animadverting on other men’s failures is
liable to so many exceptions, let us in the first place carefully purge
it from all mixture of self-love and interest, lest any private motive,
injury, grudge, or dissatisfaction of our own should seem to incite us
to the undertaking. For such a chiding as this would not pass for an
effect of kindness but of passion, and looks more like complaint than
an admonition; for the latter has always something in it that sounds
kind and yet awful, whereas the other betrays only a selfish and narrow
disposition. And therefore we usually honor and revere our monitor, but
contemn and recriminate upon a querulous accuser. As Agamemnon could by
no means digest the moderate censures of Achilles, yet bore well enough
with the severer reprimand of Ulysses,

O were thy sway the curse of meaner powers,
And thou the shame of any host but ours![116]

being satisfied of his wisdom and good intentions; for he rated him
purely upon the account of the public, the other upon his own. And
Achilles himself, though of a rough and untractable disposition and
ready enough to find faults where there were none,[117] yet heard
Patroclus patiently when he ranted him thus:

Unpitying man! no Peleus caused thy birth,
Nor did the tender Thetis bring thee forth;
But rocks, hard as thy heart, and th’ angry sea,
Clubbed to produce a monstrous man like thee.[118]

For as Hyperides the orator desired the Athenians to consider not only
whether his reflections were sharp, but also whether his sharpness
was disinterested and incorrupt; so the reproofs of a friend, if they
proceed from a sincere and disinterested affection, create veneration,
awe, and confusion in the criminal to whom they are addressed. And if
he once perceive that his friend, waiving all offences against himself,
chides him purely for those committed against others, he can never
hold out against the force of so powerful a rebuke; for the sweet and
obliging temper of his monitor gives a keener edge to his admonitions.
And therefore it has been wisely said, that especially in heats and
differences with our friends we ought to have a peculiar regard to
their honor and interest. Nor is it a less argument of friendship,
for a man who is laid aside and out of favor himself to turn advocate
in behalf of another equally despised and neglected; as Plato being
in disgrace with Dionysius begged audience of him, which he readily
granting in expectation of being entertained with an account of his
grievances, Plato addressed himself to him after this manner: Sir,
said he, if you were informed there were a certain ruffian come over
into your island of Sicily with design to attempt upon your majesty’s
person, but for want of an opportunity could not execute the villany,
would you suffer him to go off unpunished? No, by no means, Plato,
replied the king; for we ought to detest and revenge not only the overt
acts but the malicious intentions of our enemies. Well then, on the
other hand, said Plato, if there should come a person to court out of
pure kindness and ambition to serve your majesty, and you would not
give him an opportunity of expressing it, were it reasonable to dismiss
him with scorn and disrespect? Whom do you mean, said Dionysius? Why,
Aeschines, replied Plato, as honest and excellent a person as any in
the school of Socrates, and of a very edifying conversation; who,
having exposed himself to the difficulties of a tedious voyage that
he might enjoy the happiness of a philosophical converse with your
majesty, has met with nothing but contempt in return to the kindness
he intended. This friendly and generous temper of mind so strangely
affected Dionysius, that he hugged and embraced Plato, and treated
Aeschines with a great deal of honor and magnificence.

27. In the next place, let us free our discourse from all contumelious
language, all laughter, mockery, and scurrility, which spoil the relish
of our reprehensions. For, as when a chirurgeon makes an incision in
the flesh he uses decent neatness and dexterity in the operation,
without the affected and superfluous gesticulations of a quack or
mountebank, so the lancing the sores of a friend may admit indeed of a
little humor and urbanity, but that so qualified that it spoil not the
seriousness and gravity requisite to the work. For boldness, insolence,
and ill language destroy its force and efficacy. And therefore the
fiddler reparteed handsomely enough upon Philip, when he undertook to
dispute with him about the touch upon his instrument: God forbid that
your majesty should be so unhappy as to understand a fiddle better than
I do. But Epicharmus was too blunt upon Hiero, who invited him to
supper a little after he had put some of his acquaintance to death,
when he replied, Aye, but you could not invite me the other day to the
sacrifice of my friends. And so was Antiphon too rude in his reflection
upon Dionysius, when, on occasion of a discourse about the best sort
of bronze, he told him that was the best in his opinion of which
the Athenians made statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. For these
scurrilous abusive jests are most certainly disagreeable and pain to
no purpose, being but the product of an intemperate wit, and betraying
the enmity and ill-nature of him who takes the liberty to use them;
and whosoever allows himself in them does but wantonly sport about the
brink of that pit which one day will swallow him up. For Antiphon was
afterward executed under Dionysius; and Timagenes was in disgrace with
Augustus Caesar, not for any extravagant freedom in his discourse,
but only because he had taken up a foolish custom of never talking
seriously but always scurrilously at every entertainment and walk where
the emperor desired his company,—

Scorn all his joy, and laughter all his aim;[119]

alleging the pleasantness of his humor as the cause of his favor at
court.

Thus you shall meet with several smart and satirical reflections in a
comedy; but the mixture of jest and fool in the play, like ill sauce to
good meat, abates their poignancy and renders them insignificant; so
that, upon the whole, the poet acquires only the character of a saucy
and foul-mouthed buffoon, and the auditors lose that advantage which
they might otherwise reap from remarks of that nature.

We may do well therefore to reserve our jollity and mirth for more
suitable occasions, but we must by all means be serious and candid in
our admonitions; which, if they be upon important points, must be so
animated with our gestures, passion, and eagerness of voice, as to give
them weight and credit and so awaken a tender concern in the persons to
whom they are addressed.

We are again to time our reproofs as seasonably as we can; for a
mistake in the opportunities, as it is of ill consequence in all
other things, is so peculiarly in our reprehensions. And therefore, I
presume, it is manifest, we ought not to fall foul upon men in their
drink. For first, he who broaches any sour disagreeable discourse
amidst the pleasantry and good humor of friends casts a cloud over the
serenity of the company, and acts counter to the God Lysius,[120] who,
as Pindar words it, unties the band of all our cares. Besides, such
unseasonable remonstrances are not without danger; for wine is apt to
warm men into passion, and make them quarrel at the freedom you take.
And in short, it is no argument of any brave and generous, but rather
of an unmanly temper, not to dare to speak one’s sense when men are
sober, but to keep barking like a cowardly cur at table. And therefore
we need not enlarge any further upon this topic.

28. But because several persons neither will nor dare take their
friends to task whilst they thrive and flourish in the world, looking
upon prosperity as a state above the reach of a rebuke, but pour forth
their invectives like a river that has overflown its banks, insulting
and trampling upon them, when Fortune has already laid them at their
feet, out of a sort of satisfaction to see their former state and
grandeur reduced to the same level of fortune with themselves; it may
not be improper to discourse a little upon this argument, and make some
reply to that question of Euripides,—

What need is there of friends when Fortune smiles?[121]

I answer, to lower those lofty and extravagant thoughts which are
usually incident to that condition; for wisdom in conjunction with
prosperity is a rare talent and the lot of but few. Therefore most
men stand in need of a borrowed prudence, to depress the tumors that
attend an exuberant felicity; but when the turn of Fortune itself has
abated the swelling, a man’s very circumstances are sufficient of
themselves to read him a lecture of repentance, so that all other grave
and austere corrections are then superfluous and impertinent; and it
is on the contrary more proper in such traverses of Fortune to enjoy
the company of a compassionate friend,[122] who will administer some
comfort to the afflicted and buoy him up under the pressure of his
affairs. So Xenophon relates that the presence of Clearchus, a person
of a courteous and obliging aspect, gave new life and courage to his
soldiers in the heat of a battle or any other difficult rencounter.
But he who chides and upbraids a man in distress, like him who applies
a medicine for clearing the sight to a distempered and inflamed eye,
neither works a cure nor allays the pain, but only adds anger to his
sorrows and exasperates the patient. A man in health indeed will digest
a friendly lecture for his wenching, drinking, idleness, continual
recreations and bathing, or unseasonable eating; but for a sick man
to be told that all this comes of his intemperance, voluptuousness,
high feeding, or whoring, is utterly insupportable and worse than the
disease itself. O impertinent man! will such a one say, the physicians
prescribe me castor and scammony, and I am just making my last will
and testament, and do you lie railing and preaching to me lectures
of philosophy? And thus men in adversity stand more in need of our
humanity and relief than of sharp and sententious reprimands. For
neither will a nurse immediately scold at her child that is fallen,
but first help him up, wash him, and put him in order again, and
then chide and whip him. They tell us a story to this purpose of
Demetrius Phalereus, that, when he dwelt an exile at Thebes in mean
beggarly circumstances, he was once extremely concerned to observe
the philosopher Crates making towards him, expecting to be treated by
him with all the roughness of a cynical behavior. But when Crates had
addressed himself courteously to him, and discoursed him upon the point
of exile, endeavoring to convince him that it had nothing miserable or
uneasy in it, but on the contrary rather rescued him from the nice and
hazardous management of public affairs,—advising him withal to repose
his confidence in himself and his own conscience,—Demetrius was so
taken and encouraged by his discourse, that he is reported to have said
to his friends, Cursed be those employs which robbed me so long of the
acquaintance of such an excellent person. For

Soft, friendly words revive th’ afflicted soul;
But sharp rebukes are only for a fool.

And this is the way of generous and ingenuous friends. But they who
servilely admire you in prosperity,—like old fractures and sprains,
which (as Demosthenes[123] speaks) always ache and pain us when
some fresh disease has befallen the body,—stick close to you in the
revolution of your fortune, and rejoice and enjoy the change. Whereas,
if a man must needs have a remembrancer of a calamity which his own
indiscretion hath pulled upon him, it is enough you put him in mind
that he owes it not to your advice, for you often dissuaded him from
the undertaking.[124]

29. Well then, you say, when is a keen reprehension allowable, and when
may we chide a friend severely indeed? I answer, when some important
occasion requires it, as the stopping him in the career of his
voluptuousness, anger, or insolence, the repressing his covetous humor
or any other foolish habit. Thus dealt Solon with Croesus, puffed up
and debauched with the uncertain greatness of his fortune, when he
bade him look to the end. Thus Socrates humbled Alcibiades, forced him
into unfeigned tears, and turned his heart, when he argued the case
with him. Such, again, were the remonstrances and admonitions of Cyrus
to Cyaxares, and of Plato to Dion, who, when the lustre and greatness
of his achievements had fixed all men’s eyes upon him, wished him to
beware of arrogance and self-conceit, as the readiest way to make all
men abandon him. And Speusippus wrote to him, not to pride himself in
the little applauses of women and children, but to take care to adorn
Sicily with religion, justice, and wholesome laws, that he might render
the Academy great and illustrious. So did not Euctus and Eulaeus,
two of Perseus’s favorites; who fawned upon and complied with him as
obsequiously as any courtier of them all during the success of his
arms, but after his defeat at Pydna by the Romans inveighed bitterly
against him, reminding him of his past faults, till the man out of
mere anger and vexation stabbed them both on the spot. And so much
concerning the timing our reproofs in general.

30. Now there are several other accidental occasions administered
by our friends themselves, which a person heartily solicitous for
their interest will lay hold of. Thus some have taken an opportunity
of censuring them freely from a question they have asked, from the
relation of a story, or the praise or dispraise of the same actions in
other men which they themselves have committed.

Thus, they tell us, Demaratus coming from Corinth into Macedonia when
Philip and his queen and son were at odds, and being after a gracious
reception asked by the king what good understanding there was among the
Grecians, replied, as being an old friend and acquaintance of his, Aye,
by all means, sir, it highly becomes your majesty to enquire about the
concord betwixt the Athenians and Peloponnesians, when you suffer your
own family to be the scene of so much discord and contention. And as
pert was that of Diogenes, who, entering Philip’s camp as he was going
to make war upon the Grecians, was seized upon and brought before the
king, who not knowing him asked him if he was a spy. Why, yes truly,
said he, I am a spy upon your folly and imprudence, who without any
necessity upon you are come hither to expose your kingdoms and your
life to the uncertain decision of the cast of a die. This may perhaps
seem a little too biting and satirical.

31. Another seasonable opportunity of reproving your friend for his
vices is when some third person has already mortified him upon the same
account. For a courteous and obliging man will dexterously silence his
accuser, and then take him privately to task himself, advising him—if
for no other reason, yet to abate the insolence of his enemies—to
manage himself more prudently for the future. For how could they open
their mouths against you, what could they have to reproach you with,
if you would but reform such and such vices which render you obnoxious
to their censure? And by this means the offence that was given lies at
his door who roughly upbraided him; whilst the advantage he reaps is
attributed to the person who candidly advised him. But there are some
who have got yet a genteeler way of chiding, and that is, by chastising
others for faults which they know their friends really stand guilty
of. As my master Ammonius, perceiving once at his afternoon lecture
that some of his scholars had dined more plentifully than became the
moderation of students, immediately commanded one of his freedmen
to take his own son and whip him. For what? says he. The youngster,
forsooth, must needs have vinegar sauce to his meat; and with that
casting his eye upon us, he gave us to understand that we likewise were
concerned in the reprehension.

32. Again, we must be cautious how we rebuke a friend in company,
always remembering the repartee made upon Plato on that account. For
Socrates having fallen one day very severely upon an acquaintance of
his at table, Plato could not forbear to take him up, saying, Had it
not been more proper, sir, to have spoken these things in private? To
which Socrates instantly replied, And had it not been more proper for
you to have told me so in private too? And they say, Pythagoras one
time ranted a friend of his so terribly before company, that the poor
young man went and hanged himself; from which time the philosopher
would never chide any man in the presence of another. For the discovery
and cure of a vice, like that of a scandalous disease, ought to be in
secret, and not like a public show transacted upon the theatre; for it
is no way the part of a friend, but a mere cheat and trick, for one man
to recommend himself to the standers-by and seek for reputation from
the failures of another, like mountebank chirurgeons, who perform their
operations on a stage to gain the greater practice. But besides the
disgrace that attends a reproof of this nature (a thing that will never
work any cure), we are likewise to consider that vice is naturally
obstinate and loves to dispute its ground. For what Euripides says is
true not only of love,

The more ’tis checked, the more it presses on,

but of any other imperfection. If you lay a man open publicly for it
and tell all, you are so far from reforming him that you force him
to brave it out. And therefore, as Plato advises that old men who
would teach the younger fry reverence should learn to revere them
first, so certainly modestly to reprimand is the way to meet with a
modest return. For he who warily attacks the criminal works upon his
good nature by his own, and so insensibly undermines his vices. And
therefore it would be much more proper to observe the rule in Homer

To whisper softly in the ear,
Lest standers-by should chance to hear.[125]

But above all, we ought not to discover the imperfections of an husband
before his wife, nor of a father before his children, nor of a lover in
company of his mistress, nor of masters in presence of their scholars,
or the like; for it touches a man to the quick to be rebuked before
those whom he would have think honorably of him. And I verily believe
that it was not so much the heat of the wine as the sting of too public
a reprehension, that enraged Alexander against Clitus. And Aristomenes,
Ptolemy’s preceptor, lost himself by awaking the king, who had dropped
asleep one time at an audience of foreign embassadors; for the court
parasites immediately took this occasion to express their pretendedly
deep resentments of the disgrace done his majesty, suggesting that,
if indeed the cares of the government had brought a little seasonable
drowsiness upon him, he might have been told of it in private, but
should not have had rude hands laid upon his person before so great an
assembly; which so affected the king, that he presently sent the poor
man a draught of poison, and made him drink it up. And Aristophanes
says, Cleon blamed him for railing at Athens before strangers,[126]
whereby he incensed the Athenians against him. And therefore they
who aim at the interest and reformation of their friends rather than
ostentation and popularity, ought amongst other things to beware of
exposing them too publicly.

Again, what Thucydides[127] makes the Corinthians say of themselves,
that they were persons every way qualified for the reprehension of
other men, ought to be the character of every one who sets up for a
monitor. For, as Lysander replied upon a certain Megarian, who in a
council of allies and confederates had spoken boldly in behalf of
Greece, This style of yours, sir, needs a state to back it; so he who
takes upon him the liberty of a censor must be a man of a regular
conversation himself,—one like Plato, whose life was a continued
lecture to Speusippus, or Xenocrates, who, casting his eye one time
upon the dissolute Polemon at a disputation, reformed him with the very
awfulness of his looks. Whereas the remonstrance of a lewd whiffling
fellow will certainly meet with no better entertainment than that of
the old proverbial repartee,

Physician, heal thyself.[128]

33. But because several accidental emergencies in conversation will now
and then invite a man, though bad enough himself, to correct others,
the most dexterous way of doing it will be to involve ourselves in the
same guilt with those we reprehend; as in this passage of Homer,

Fie, what’s the matter, Diomede, that we
Have now forgot our former gallantry?

and in this other,

We are not worth one single Hector all.[129]

Thus Socrates would handsomely twit the young men with their ignorance
by professing his own, pretending for his part he had need with them
to study morality and make more accurate enquiries into the truth of
things. For a confession of the same guilt, and a seeming endeavor to
reform ourselves as well as our friends, gives credit to the reprimand
and recommends it to their affections. But he who gravely magnifies
himself, whilst he imperiously detracts from others, as being a man
forsooth of no imperfections, unless his age or a celebrated reputation
indeed commands our attention, is only impertinent and troublesome
to no purpose. And therefore it was not without reason that Phoenix,
checking Achilles for his intemperate anger, confessed his own
unhappiness in that particular, how he had like once to have slain his
own father through a transport of passion had not the scandalous name
of parricide held his hands;[130] that the hero might not imagine he
took that liberty with him because he had never offended in the like
kind himself. For such inoffensive reproofs leave a deeper impress
behind them, when they seem the result of sympathy rather than contempt.

But because a mind subject to the disorders of passion, like an
inflamed eye that cannot bear a great and glaring light, is impatient
of a rebuke, without some temperament to qualify and allay its
poignancy, therefore the best remedy in this case will be to dash it
with a little praise, as in the following:

Think, and subdue! on dastards dead to fame
I waste no anger, for they feel no shame;
But you, the pride, the flower of all our host,
My heart weeps blood to see your glory lost!

Where, Pandarus, are all thy honors now,
Thy winged arrows and unerring bow,
Thy matchless skill, thy yet unrivall’d fame
And boasted glory of the Lycian name![131]

And such rebukes as these are also most effectual in reclaiming those
that are ready to fall into gross enormities:

O where are Oedipus and all his riddles now?

and

Is this the speech of daring Hercules?[132]

For a mixture of both together not only abates and takes off from that
roughness and command which a blunt reprehension seems to carry along
with it, but raises in a man a generous emulation of himself, whilst
the remembrance of his past virtues shames him out of his present vices
and makes him propose his former actions for his future example. But
if you compare him with other men, as with his fellow-citizens, his
contemporaries, or relations, then vice, which loves to dispute the
victory, renders him uneasy and impatient under the comparison, and
will be apt to make him grumble, and in an huff bid you be gone then
to his betters and not trouble him any longer. And therefore we ought
not to fall upon other men’s commendations before him whom we take the
liberty to rebuke, unless indeed they be his parents; as Agamemnon in
Homer,—

Ah! how unlike his sire is Tydeus’ son![133]

and Ulysses in the tragedy called the Scyrians, speaking to Achilles,—

Dost thou, who sprang from a brave Grecian race
By spinning thy great ancestors disgrace?

34. It is in the next place very improper for a man immediately to
retort or recriminate upon his monitor; for this is the way to occasion
heats and animosities betwixt them, and will speak him rather impatient
of any reproof at all than desirous to recompensate the kindness of one
with another. And therefore it is better to take his chiding patiently
for the present; and if he chance afterwards to commit a fault worth
your remarking upon, you have then an opportunity of repaying him in
his own coin. For being reminded, without the least intimation of
a former pique or dissatisfaction, that he himself did not use to
overlook the slips of his friend, he will receive the remonstrance
favorably at your hands, as being the return of kindness rather than of
anger and resentment.

35. Moreover, as Thucydides[134] says that he is a wise man who
will not venture to incur odium except for matters of the highest
concernment, so, when we do undertake the ungrateful office of censor,
it ought to be only upon weighty and important occasions. For he
who is peevish and angry at everybody and upon every trivial fault,
acting rather with the imperious pedantry of a schoolmaster than the
discretion of a friend, blunts the edge of his reprehensions in matters
of an higher nature, by squandering, like an unskilful physician, that
keen and bitter but necessary and sovereign remedy of his reproofs
upon many slight distempers that require not so exquisite a cure. And
therefore a wise man will industriously avoid the character of being a
person who is always chiding and delights in finding faults. Besides
that, whosoever is of that little humor that animadverts upon every
trifling peccadillo only affords his friend a fairer occasion of being
even with him one time or another for his grosser immoralities. As
Philotimus the physician, visiting a patient of his who was troubled
with an inflammation in his liver, but showed him his forefinger,
told him: Sir, your distemper is not a whitlow. In like manner we may
take occasion now and then to reply upon a man who carps at trifles
in another,—his diversions, pleasantries, or a glass of wine,—Let the
gentleman rather, sir, turn off his whore and leave off his dicing;
for otherwise he is an admirable person. For he who is dispensed with
in smaller matters more willingly gives his friend the liberty of
reprimanding him for greater. But there is neither child nor brother
nor servant himself able to endure a man of a busy inquisitive
humor, who brawls perpetually, and is sour and unpleasant upon every
inconsiderable occasion.

36. But since a weak and foolish friend, as Euripides says of old age,
has its strong as well as its feeble part, we ought to observe both,
and cheerfully extol the one before we fall foul upon the other. For as
we first soften iron in the fire and then dip it in water, to harden
it into a due consistence; so, after we have warmed and mollified
our friend by a just commendation of his virtues, we may then safely
temper him with a moderate reprehension of his vices. We may then say,
Are these actions comparable to the other? Do you not perceive the
advantages of a virtuous life? This is what we who are your friends
require of you. These are properly your own actions, for which nature
designed you; but for the other,

Let them for ever from you banished be,
To desert mountains or the raging sea.[135]

For as a prudent physician had rather recover his patient with sleep
and good diet than with castor and scammony, so a candid friend, a
good father or schoolmaster, will choose to reform men’s manners by
commendations rather than reproofs. For nothing in the world renders
our corrections so inoffensive and withal so useful as to address
ourselves to the delinquent in a kind, affectionate manner. And
therefore we ought not to deal roughly with him upon his denial of the
matter of fact, nor hinder him from making his just vindication; but we
should rather handsomely help him out in his apology and mollify the
matter. As Hector to his brother Paris,

Unhappy man, by passion overruled;[136]

suggesting that he did not quit the field, in his encounter with
Menelaus, out of cowardice, but mere anger and indignation. And Nestor
speaks thus to Agamemnon.

You only yielded to the great impulse.[137]

For to tell a man that he did such a thing through ignorance or
inadvertency is, in my opinion, a much more genteel expression than
bluntly to say, “You have dealt unjustly or acted basely by me.” And to
advise a man not to quarrel with his brother is more civil than to say,
“Don’t you envy and malign him.” And “Keep not company with that woman
who debauches you” is softer language than “Don’t you debauch her.”

And thus you see with what caution and moderation we must reprehend
our friends in reclaiming them from vices to which they are already
subjected; whilst the prevention of them doth require a clear contrary
method. For when we are to divert them from the commission of a crime,
or to check a violent and headstrong passion, or to push on and excite
a phlegmatic lazy humor to great things, we may then ascribe their
failings to as dishonorable causes as we please.

Thus Ulysses, when he would awaken the courage of Achilles, in one of
the tragedies of Sophocles, tells him, that it was not the business of
a supper that put him in such a fret, as he pretended, but because he
was now arrived within sight of the walls of Troy. And when Achilles,
in a great chafe at the affront, swore he would sail back again with
his squadron and leave him to himself, Ulysses came upon him again with
this rejoinder

Come, sir, ’tis not for this you’d sail away;
But Hector’s near, it is not safe to stay

And thus, by representing to the bold and valiant the danger of being
reputed a coward, to the temperate and sober that of being thought
a debauchee, and to the liberal and magnificent the chance of being
called stingy and sordid, we spur them on to brave actions and divert
them from base and ignominious ones.

Indeed, when a thing is once done and past remedy, we ought to qualify
and attemperate our reproofs, and commiserate rather than reprimand.
But if it be a business of pure prevention, of stopping a friend in
the career of his irregularities, our applications must be vehement,
inexorable, and indefatigable; for this is the proper season for a
man to show himself a true monitor and a friend indeed. But we see
that even enemies reprove each other for faults already committed. As
Diogenes said pertinently enough to this purpose, that he who would
act wisely ought to be surrounded either with good friends or flagrant
enemies; for the one always teach us well, and the other as constantly
accuse us if we do ill.

But certainly it is much more eligible to forbear the commission of a
fault by hearkening to the good advice of our friends, than afterwards
to repent of it by reason of the obloquy of our enemies. And therefore,
if for no other reason, we ought to apply our reprehensions with a
great deal of art and dexterity, because they are the most sovereign
physic that a friend can prescribe, and require not only a due mixture
of ingredients in the preparation of them but a seasonable juncture for
the patient to take them in.

37. But because, as it has been before observed, reproofs usually carry
something of trouble and vexation along with them, we must imitate
skilful physicians, who, when they have made an incision in the flesh,
leave it not open to the smart and torment that attends it, but chafe
and foment it to assuage the pain. So he who would admonish dexterously
must not immediately give a man over to the sting and anguish of his
reprehensions, but endeavor to skin over the sore with a more mild
and diverting converse; like stone-cutters, who, when they have made
a fracture in their statues, polish and brighten them afterwards. But
if we leave them in pain with their wounds and resentments, and (as it
were) with the scars of our reproofs yet green upon them, they will
hardly be brought to admit of any lenitive we shall offer for the
future. And therefore they who will take upon them to admonish their
friends ought especially to observe this main point, not to leave
them immediately upon it, nor abruptly break off the conference with
disobliging and bitter expressions.

THAT IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO LIVE PLEASURABLY ACCORDING TO THE DOCTRINE
OF EPICURUS.

PLUTARCH, ZEUXIPPUS, THEON, ARISTODEMUS.

1. Epicurus’s great confidant and familiar, Colotes, set forth a book
with this title to it, that according to the tenets of the other
philosophers it is impossible to live. Now what occurred to me then
to say against him, in the defence of those philosophers, hath been
already put into writing by me. But since upon breaking up of our
lecture several things have happened to be spoken afterwards in the
walks in further opposition to his party, I thought it not amiss to
recollect them also, if for no other reason, yet for this one, that
those who will needs be contradicting other men may see that they ought
not to run cursorily over the discourses and writings of those they
would disprove, nor by tearing out one word here and another there, or
by falling foul upon particular passages without the books, to impose
upon the ignorant and unlearned.

2. Now as we were leaving the school to take a walk (as our manner is)
in the place of exercise, Zeuxippus began to us: In my opinion, said
he, the debate was managed on our side with more softness and less
freedom than was fitting. I am sure, Heraclides sufficiently signified
his disgust at us at parting, for handling Epicurus and Metrodorus
more roughly than they deserved. Yet you may remember, replied Theon,
how you told them that Colotes himself, compared with the rhetoric of
those two gentlemen, would appear the complaisantest man alive; for
when they have raked together the lewdest terms of ignominy the tongue
of man ever used, as buffooneries, trollings, arrogancies, whorings,
assassinations, whining counterfeits, vile seducers, and blockheads,
they faintly throw them in the faces of Aristotle, Socrates,
Pythagoras, Protagoras, Theophrastus, Heraclides, Hipparchus, and which
not, even of the best and most celebrated authorities. So that, should
they pass for very knowing men upon all other accounts, yet their very
calumnies and reviling language would bespeak them at the greatest
distance from philosophy imaginable. For emulation can never enter that
God-like consort, nor such fretfulness as wants resolution to conceal
its own resentments. Aristodemus then subjoined: Heraclides, you know,
is a great philologist; and that may be the reason why he made Epicurus
those amends for the poetic din (so that party style poetry) and for
the fooleries of Homer; or else, it may be, it was because Metrodorus
had libelled that poet in so many books. But let us let these gentlemen
pass at present, Zeuxippus, and rather return to what was charged
upon the philosophers in the beginning of our discourse, that it is
impossible to live according to their tenets. And I see not why we two
may not despatch this affair betwixt us, with the good assistance of
Theon; for I find this gentleman (meaning me) is already tired. Then
Theon said to him,

Our fellows have that garland from us won;

therefore, if you please,

Let’s fix another goal, and at that run.[138]

We will even prosecute them at the suit of the philosophers, in the
following form: We’ll prove, if we can, that it is impossible to live
a pleasurable life according to their tenets. Bless me! said I to him,
smiling, you seem to me to level your foot at the very bellies of the
men, and to design to enter the list with them for their lives, whilst
you go about to rob them thus of their pleasure, and they cry out to
you,

“Forbear, we’re no good boxers, sir;

no, nor good pleaders, nor good senators, nor good magistrates either;

Our proper talent is to eat and drink,[139]

and to excite such tender and delicate motions in our bodies as may
chafe our imaginations to some jolly delight or gayety.” And therefore
you seem to me not so much to take off (as I may say) the pleasurable
part, as to deprive the men of their very lives, while you will not
leave them to live pleasurably. Nay then, said Theon, if you think so
well of this subject-matter, why do you not set in hand to it? By all
means, said I, I am for this, and shall not only hear but answer you
too, if you shall require it. But I must leave it to you to take the
lead.

Then, after Theon had spoken something to excuse himself, Aristodemus
said: When we had so short and fair a cut to our design, how have you
blocked up the way before us, by preventing us from joining issue with
the faction at the very first upon the single point of honesty! For you
must grant, it can be no easy matter to drive men already possessed
that pleasure is their utmost good yet to believe a life of pleasure
impossible to be attained. But now the truth is, that just when they
failed of living honestly they failed also of living pleasurably; for
to live pleasurably without living honestly is even by themselves
allowed inconsistent.

3. Theon then said: We may probably resume the consideration of that in
the process of our discourse; in the interim we will make use of their
concessions. Now they suppose their last good to lie about the belly
and such other conveyances of the body as let in pleasure and not
pain; and are of opinion, that all the brave and ingenious inventions
that ever have been were contrived at first for the pleasure of the
belly, or the good hope of compassing such pleasure,—as the sage
Metrodorus informs us. By which, my good friend, it is very plain,
they found their pleasure in a poor, rotten, and unsure thing, and
one that is equally perforated for pains, by the very passages they
receive their pleasures by; or rather indeed, that admits pleasure but
by a few, but pain by all its parts. For the whole of pleasure is in a
manner in the joints, nerves, feet, and hands; and these are oft the
seats of very grievous and lamentable distempers, as gouts, corroding
rheums, gangrenes, and putrid ulcers. And if you apply to yourself the
exquisitest of perfumes or gusts, you will find but some one small part
of your body is finely and delicately touched, while the rest are many
times filled with anguish and complaints. Besides, there is no part
of us proof against fire, sword, teeth, or scourges, or insensible
of dolors and aches; yea, heats, colds, and fevers sink into all our
parts alike. But pleasures, like gales of soft wind, move simpering,
one towards one extreme of the body and another towards another, and
then go off in a vapor. Nor are they of any long durance, but, as so
many glancing meteors, they are no sooner kindled in the body than they
are quenched by it. As to pain, Aeschylus’s Philoctetes affords us a
sufficient testimony:

The cruel viper ne’er will quit my foot;
Her dire envenomed teeth have there ta’en root.

For pain will not troll off as pleasure doth, nor imitate it in its
pleasing and tickling touches. But as the clover twists its perplexed
and winding roots into the earth, and through its coarseness abides
there a long time; so pain disperses and entangles its hooks and roots
in the body, and continues there, not for a day or a night, but for
several seasons of years, if not for some revolutions of Olympiads,
nor scarce ever departs unless struck out by other pains, as by
stronger nails. For who ever drank so long as those that are in a fever
are adry? Or who was ever so long eating as those that are besieged
suffer hunger? Or where are there any that are so long solaced with
the conversation of friends as tyrants are racking and tormenting?
Now all this is owing to the baseness of the body and its natural
incapacity for a pleasurable life; for it bears pains better than it
doth pleasures, and with respect to those is firm and hardy, but with
respect to these is feeble and soon palled. To which add, that if we
are minded to discourse on a life of pleasure, these men won’t give
us leave to go on, but will presently confess themselves that the
pleasures of the body are but short, or rather indeed but of a moment’s
continuance; if they do not design to banter us or else speak out of
vanity, when Metrodorus tells us, We many times spit at the pleasures
of the body, and Epicurus saith, A wise man, when he is sick, many
times laughs at the very extremity of his distemper.

With what consistence then can those that account the pains of the body
so light and easy think so highly of its pleasures? For should we allow
them not to come behind its pains either in duration or magnitude, they
would not yet have their being without them. For Epicurus hath made
the removal of all that pains the common definition of all pleasure;
as if Nature had intended to advance the pleasurable part only to the
destruction of the painful, but would not have it improved any further
in magnitude, and as if she only diverted herself with certain useless
diversifications after she hath once arrived to an abolition of pain.
But now the passage to this, conjoined with an appetence which is the
measure of pleasure, is extremely short and soon over. And therefore
the sense of their narrow entertainment here hath obliged them to
transplant their last end from the body, as from a poor and lean soil,
to the mind, in hopes of enjoying there, as it were, large pastures and
fair meadows of delights and satisfactions.

For Ithaca is no fit place
For mettled steeds to run a race.[140]

Neither can the joys of our poor bodies be smooth and equal; but on the
contrary they must be coarse and harsh, and immixed with much that is
displeasing and inflamed.

4. Zeuxippus then said: And do you not think then they take the right
course to begin at the body, where they observe pleasure to have its
first rise, and thence to pass to the mind as the more stable and sure
part, there to complete and crown the whole?

They do, by Jove, I said; and if, after removing thither, they have
indeed found something more consummate than before, they take a course
too as well agreeing with nature as becoming men adorned with both
contemplative and civil knowledge. But if after all this you still
hear them cry out, and protest that the mind of man can receive no
satisfaction or tranquillity from any thing under Heaven but the
pleasures of the body either in possession or expectance, and that
these are its proper and only good, can you forbear thinking they make
use of the soul but as a funnel for the body, while they mellow their
pleasure by shifting it from one vessel to another, as they rack wine
out of an old and leaky vessel into a new one and there let it grow
old, and then imagine they have performed some extraordinary and very
fine thing? True indeed, time may both keep and recover wine that hath
thus been drawn off; but the mind, receiving but the remembrance only
of past pleasure, like a kind of scent, retains that and no more. For
as soon as it hath given one hiss in the body, it immediately expires,
and that little of it that stays behind in the memory is but flat and
like a queasy fume; as if a man should lay up and treasure in his
fancy what he either ate or drank yesterday, that he may have recourse
to that when he wants fresh fare. See now how much more temperate the
Cyrenaics are, who, though they have drunk out of the same bottle with
Epicurus, yet will not allow men so much as to practise their amours by
candle-light, but only under the covert of the dark, for fear seeing
should fasten too quick an impression of the images of such actions
upon the fancy and thereby too frequently inflame the desire. But these
gentlemen account it the highest accomplishment of a philosopher to
have a clear and retentive memory of all the various figures, passions,
and touches of past pleasure. We will not now say, they present us with
nothing worthy the name of philosophy, while they leave the refuse of
pleasure in their wise man’s mind, as if it could be a lodging for
bodies; but that it is impossible such things as these should make a
man live pleasurably, I think is abundantly manifest from hence.

For it will not perhaps seem strange if I assert, that the memory of
pleasure past brings no pleasure with it if it seemed but little in
the very enjoyment, or to men of such abstinence as to account it for
their benefit to retire from its first approaches; when even the most
amazed and sensual admirers of corporeal delights remain no longer in
their gaudy and pleasant humor than their pleasure lasts them. What
remains is but an empty shadow and dream of that pleasure that hath now
taken wing and is fled from them and that serves but for fuel to foment
their untamed desires. Like as in those that dream they are adry or
in love, their unaccomplished pleasures and enjoyments do but excite
the inclination to a greater keenness. Nor indeed can the remembrance
of past enjoyments afford them any real contentment at all, but must
serve only, with the help of a quick desire, to raise up very much of
outrage and stinging pain out of the remains of a feeble and befooling
pleasure. Neither doth it befit men of continence and sobriety to
exercise their thoughts about such poor things, or to do what one
twitted Carneades with, to reckon, as out of a diurnal, how oft they
have lain with Hedia or Leontion, or where they last drank Thasian
wine, or at what twentieth-day feast they had a costly supper. For
such transport and captivatedness of the mind to its own remembrances
as this is would show a deplorable and bestial restlessness and raving
towards the present and hoped-for acts of pleasure. And therefore I
cannot but look upon the sense of these inconveniences as the true
cause of their retiring at last to a freedom from pain and a firm
state of body; as if living pleasurably could lie in bare imagining
this either past or future to some persons. True indeed it is, “that a
sound state of body and a good assurance of its continuing must needs
afford a most transcending and solid satisfaction to all men capable of
reasoning.”

5. But yet look first what work they make, while they course this
same thing—whether it be pleasure, exemption from pain, or good
health—up and down, first from the body to the mind, and then back
again from the mind to the body, being compelled to return it to
its first origin, lest it should run out and so give them the slip.
Thus they pitch the pleasure of the body (as Epicurus says) upon the
complacent joy in the mind, and yet conclude again with the good
hopes that complacent joy hath in bodily pleasure. Indeed what wonder
is it if, when the foundation shakes, the superstructure totter? Or
that there should be no sure hope nor unshaken joy in a matter that
suffers so great concussion and changes as continually attend a body
exposed to so many violences and strokes from without, and having
within it the origins of such evils as human reason cannot avert? For
if it could, no understanding man would ever fall under stranguries,
gripes, consumptions, or dropsies; with some of which Epicurus
himself did conflict and Polyaenus with others, while others of them
were the deaths of Neocles and Agathobulus. And this we mention not
to disparage them, knowing very well that Pherecydes and Heraclitus,
both very excellent persons, labored under very uncouth and calamitous
distempers. We only beg of them, if they will own their own diseases
and not by noisy rants and popular harangues incur the imputation of
false bravery, either not to take the health of the whole body for
the ground of their content, or else not to say that men under the
extremities of dolors and diseases can yet rally and be pleasant.
For a sound and hale constitution of body is indeed a thing that
often happens, but a firm and steadfast assurance of its continuance
can never befall any intelligent mind. But as at sea (according to
Aeschylus)

Night to the ablest pilot trouble brings,[141]

and so will a calm too, for no man knows what will be,—so likewise is
it impossible for a soul that dwells in a healthful body, and that
places her good in the hopes she hath of that body, to perfect her
voyage here without frights or waves. For man’s mind hath not, like the
sea, its tempests and storms only from without it, but it also raises
up from within far more and greater disturbances. And a man may with
more reason look for constant fair weather in the midst of winter than
for perpetual exemption from afflictions in his body. For what else
hath given the poets occasion to term us creatures of a day, uncertain
and unfixed, and to liken our lives to leaves that both spring and fall
in the compass of a summer, but the unhappy, calamitous, and sickly
condition of the body, whose very utmost good we are warned to dread
and prevent? For an exquisite habit, Hippocrates saith, is slippery and
hazardous. And

He that but now looked jolly, plump, and stout,
Like a star shot by Jove, is now gone out;

as it is in Euripides. And it is a vulgar persuasion, that very
handsome persons, when looked upon, oft suffer damage by envy and an
evil eye; for (it is said) a body at its utmost vigor will through
delicacy very soon admit of changes.

6. But now that these men are miserably unprovided for an undisturbed
life, you may discern even from what they themselves advance against
others. For they say that those who commit wickedness and incur the
displeasure of the laws live in constant misery and fear, for, though
they may perhaps attain to privacy, yet it is impossible they should
ever be well assured of that privacy; whence the ever-impending fear of
the future will not permit them to have either complacency or assurance
in their present circumstances. But they consider not how they speak
all this against themselves. For a sound and healthy state of body
they may indeed oftentimes possess, but that they should ever be well
assured of its continuance is impossible; and they must of necessity be
in constant disquiet and pain for the body with respect to futurity,
never succeeding in attaining to that firm and steadfast assurance
from it which they expect. But to do no wickedness will contribute
nothing to our assurance; for it is not suffering justly but suffering
in itself that is dismaying. Nor can it be a matter of trouble to
be engaged in villanies one’s self, and not afflictive to suffer by
the villanies of others. Neither can it be said that the tyranny of
Lachares was less, if it was not more, calamitous to the Athenians,
and that of Dionysius to the Syracusans, than they were to the tyrants
themselves; for it was disturbing that made them be disturbed; and
their first oppressing and pestering of others gave them occasion to
expect to suffer ill themselves. Why should a man recount the outrages
of rabbles, the barbarities of thieves, or the villanies of inheritors,
or yet the contagions of airs and the concursions of seas, by which
Epicurus (as himself writeth) was in his voyage to Lampsacus within
very little of drowning? The very composition of the body—it containing
in it the matter of all diseases, and (to use a pleasantry of the
vulgar) cutting thongs for the beast out of its own hide, I mean pains
out of the body—is sufficient to render life perilous and uneasy, and
that to the good as well as to the bad, if they have learned to place
their complacence and assurance in the body and the hopes they have
of it, and in nothing else; as Epicurus hath written, as well in many
other of his discourses as in that of Man’s End.

7. They therefore assign not only a treacherous and unsure ground of
their pleasurable living, but also one in all respects despicable and
little, if the escaping of evils be the matter of their complacence
and last good. But now they tell us, nothing else can be so much as
imagined, and nature hath no other place to bestow her good in but only
that out of which her evil hath been driven; as Metrodorus speaks in
his book against the Sophists. So that this single thing, to escape
evil, he says, is the supreme good; for there is no room to lodge this
good in where nothing of what is painful and afflicting goes out.
Like unto this is that of Epicurus, where he saith: The very essence
of good arises from the escaping of bad, and a man’s recollecting,
considering, and rejoicing within himself that this hath befallen him.
For what occasions transcending joy (he saith) is some great impending
evil escaped; and in this lies the very nature and essence of good, if
a man attain unto it aright, and contain himself when he hath done,
and not ramble and prate idly about it. Oh the rare satisfaction and
felicity these men enjoy, that can thus rejoice for having undergone no
evil and endured neither sorrow nor pain! Have they not reason, think
you, to value themselves for such things as these, and to talk as they
are wont when they style themselves immortals and equals to Gods?—and
when, through the excessiveness and transcendency of the blessed things
they enjoy, they rave even to the degree of whooping and hollowing for
very satisfaction that, to the shame of all mortals, they have been the
only men that could find out this celestial and divine good that lies
in an exemption from all evil? So that their beatitude differs little
from that of swine and sheep, while they place it in a mere tolerable
and contented state, either of the body, or of the mind upon the body’s
account. For even the wiser and more ingenious sort of brutes do not
esteem escaping of evil their last end; but when they have taken their
repast, they are disposed next by fulness to singing, and they divert
themselves with swimming and flying; and their gayety and sprightliness
prompt them to entertain themselves with attempting to counterfeit all
sorts of voices and notes; and then they make their caresses to one
another, by skipping and dancing one towards another; nature inciting
them, after they have escaped evil, to look after some good, or rather
to shake off what they find uneasy and disagreeing, as an impediment to
their pursuit of something better and more congenial.

8. For what we cannot be without deserves not the name of good; but
that which claims our desire and preference must be something beyond a
bare escape from evil. And so, by Jove, must that be too that is either
agreeing or congenial to us, according to Plato, who will not allow us
to give the name of pleasures to the bare departures of sorrows and
pains, but would have us look upon them rather as obscure draughts
and mixtures of agreeing and disagreeing, as of black and white,
while the extremes would advance themselves to a middle temperament.
But oftentimes unskilfulness and ignorance of the true nature of the
extreme occasions some to mistake the middle temperament for the
extreme and outmost part. Thus do Epicurus and Metrodorus, while
they make avoiding of evil to be the very essence and consummation
of good, and so receive but as it were the satisfaction of slaves or
of rogues newly discharged the gaol, who are well enough contented
if they may but wash and supple their sores and the stripes they
received by whipping, but never in their lives had one taste or sight
of a generous, clean, unmixed, and unulcerated joy. For it follows
not that, if it be vexatious to have one’s body itch or one’s eyes to
run, it must be therefore a blessing to scratch one’s self, and to
wipe one’s eye with a rag; nor that, if it be bad to be dejected or
dismayed at divine matters or to be discomposed with the relations of
hell, therefore the bare avoiding of all this must be some happy and
amiable thing. The truth is, these men’s opinion, though it pretends so
far to outgo that of the vulgar, allows their joy but a straight and
narrow compass to toss and tumble in, while it extends it but to an
exemption from the fear of hell, and so makes that the top of acquired
wisdom which is doubtless natural to the brutes. For if freedom from
bodily pain be still the same, whether it come by endeavor or by
nature, neither then is an undisturbed state of mind the greater for
being attained to by industry than if it came by nature. Though a man
may with good reason maintain that to be the more confirmed habit of
the mind which naturally admits of no disorder, than that which by
application and judgment eschews it.

But let us suppose them both equal; they will yet appear not one jot
superior to the beasts for being unconcerned at the stories of hell
and the legends of the Gods, and for not expecting endless sorrows
and everlasting torments hereafter. For it is Epicurus himself that
tells us that, had our surmises about celestial things and our foolish
apprehensions of death and the pains that ensue it given us no
disquiet, we had not then needed to contemplate nature for our relief.
For neither have the brutes any weak surmises of the Gods or fond
opinions about things after death to disorder themselves with; nor
have they as much as imagination or notion that there is any thing in
these to be dreaded. I confess, had they left us the benign providence
of God as a presumption, wise men might then seem, by reason of their
good hopes from thence, to have something towards a pleasurable life
that beasts have not. But now, since they have made it the scope of
all their discourses of God that they may not fear him, but may be
eased of all concern about him, I much question whether those that
never thought at all of him have not this in a more confirmed degree
than they that have learned to think he can do no harm. For if they
were never freed from superstition, they never fell into it; and if
they never laid aside a disturbing conceit of God, they never took one
up. The like may be said as to hell and the future state. For though
neither the Epicurean nor the brute can hope for any good thence; yet
such as have no forethought of death at all cannot but be less amused
and scared with what comes after it than they that betake themselves
to the principle that death is nothing to us. But something to them it
must be, at least so far as they concern themselves to reason about it
and contemplate it; but the beasts are wholly exempted from thinking
of what appertains not to them; and if they fly from blows, wounds,
and slaughters, they fear no more in death than is dismaying to the
Epicurean himself.

9. Such then are the things they boast to have attained by their
philosophy. Let us now see what those are they deprive themselves of
and chase away from them. For those diffusions of the mind that arise
from the body, and the pleasing condition of the body, if they be
but moderate, appear to have nothing in them that is either great or
considerable; but if they be excessive, besides their being vain and
uncertain, they are also importune and petulant; nor should a man term
them either mental satisfactions or gayeties, but rather corporeal
gratifications, they being at best but the simperings and effeminacies
of the mind. But now such as justly deserve the names of complacencies
and joys are wholly refined from their contraries, and are immixed with
neither vexation, remorse, nor repentance; and their good is congenial
to the mind and truly mental and genuine, and not superinduced. Nor is
it devoid of reason, but most rational, as springing either from that
in the mind that is contemplative and enquiring, or else from that part
of it that is active and heroic. How many and how great satisfactions
either of these affords us, he that would can never relate. But to
hint briefly at some of them. We have the historians before us, which,
though they find us many and delightful exercises, still leave our
desire after truth insatiate and uncloyed with pleasure, through which
even lies are not without their grace. Yea, tales and poetic fictions,
while they cannot gain upon our belief, have something in them that is
charming to us.

10. For do but think with yourself, with what a sting we read Plato’s
Atlantic and the conclusion of the Iliad, and how we hanker and gape
after the rest of the tale, as when some beautiful temple or theatre
is shut up. But now the informing of ourselves with the truth herself
is a thing so delectable and lovely as if our very life and being
were for the sake of knowing. And the darkest and grimmest things in
death are its oblivion, ignorance, and obscurity. Whence, by Jove, it
is that almost all mankind encounter with those that would destroy
the sense of the departed, as placing the very whole of their life,
being, and satisfaction solely in the sensible and knowing part of the
mind. For even the things that grieve and afflict us yet afford us a
sort of pleasure in the hearing. And it is often seen that those that
are disordered by what is told them, even to the degree of weeping,
notwithstanding require the telling of it. So he in the tragedy who is
told,

Alas! I now the very worst must tell,

replies,

I dread to hear it too, but I must hear.[142]

But this may seem perhaps a sort of intemperateness of delight in
knowing every thing, and as it were a stream violently bearing down the
reasoning faculty. But now, when a story that hath in it nothing that
is troubling and afflictive treats of great and heroic enterprises with
a potency and grace of style such as we find in Herodotus’s Grecian and
in Xenophon’s Persian history, or in what,

Inspired by heavenly Gods, sage Homer sung,

or in the Travels of Eudoxus, the Foundations and Republics of
Aristotle, and the Lives of Famous Men compiled by Aristoxenus;—these
will not only bring us exceeding much and great contentment, but such
also as is clean and secure from repentance. And who could take greater
satisfaction either in eating when a-hungry or drinking when a-dry
amongst the Phaeacians, than in going over Ulysses’s relation of his
own voyage and rambles? And what man could be better pleased with the
embraces of the most exquisite beauty, than with sitting up all night
to read over what Xenophon hath written of Panthea, or Aristobulus of
Timoclea, or Theopompus of Thebe?

11. But now these appertain all solely to the mind. But they chase
away from them the delights that accrue from the mathematics also.
Though the satisfactions we receive from history have in them something
simple and equal; but those that come from geometry, astronomy, and
music inveigle and allure us with a sort of nimbleness and variety, and
want nothing that is tempting and engaging; their figures attracting
us as so many charms, whereof whoever hath once tasted, if he be but
competently skilled, will run about singing that in Sophocles,

I’m mad; the Muses with new rage inspire me.
I’ll mount the hill; my lyre, my numbers fire me.[143]

Nor doth Thamyras break out into poetic raptures upon any other score;
nor, by Jove, Eudoxus, Aristarchus, or Archimedes. And when the lovers
of the art of painting are so enamored with the charmingness of their
own performances, that Nicias, as he was drawing the Evocation of
Ghosts in Homer, often asked his servants whether he had dined or no,
and when King Ptolemy had sent him threescore talents for his piece,
after it was finished, he neither would accept the money nor part with
his work; what and how great satisfactions may we then suppose to have
been reaped from geometry and astronomy by Euclid when he wrote his
Dioptrics, by Philippus when he had perfected his demonstration of the
figure of the moon, by Archimedes when with the help of a certain angle
he had found the sun’s diameter to make the same part of the largest
circle that that angle made of four right angles, and by Apollonius and
Aristarchus who were the inventors of some other things of the like
nature? The bare contemplating and comprehending of these now engender
in the learners both unspeakable delights and a marvellous height of
spirit. And it doth in no wise beseem me, by comparing with these the
fulsome debauchees of victualling-houses and stews, to contaminate
Helicon and the Muses,—

Where swain his flock ne’er fed,
Nor tree by hatchet bled.[144]

But these are the verdant and untrampled pastures of ingenious bees;
but those are more like the mange of lecherous boars and he-goats.
And though a voluptuous temper of mind be naturally fantastic and
precipitate, yet never any yet sacrificed an ox for joy that he
had gained his will of his mistress; nor did any ever wish to die
immediately, might he but once satiate himself with the costly dishes
and comfits at the table of his prince. But now Eudoxus wished he might
stand by the sun, and inform himself of the figure, magnitude, and
beauty of that luminary, though he were, like Phaethon, consumed by
it. And Pythagoras offered an ox in sacrifice for having completed the
lines of a certain geometric diagram; as Apollodotus tells us,

When the famed lines Pythagoras devised,
For which a splendid ox he sacrificed.

Whether it was that by which he showed that the [square of the] line
that regards the right angle in a triangle is equivalent to the
[squares of the] two lines that contain that angle, or the problem
about the area of the parabolic section of a cone. And Archimedes’s
servants were forced to hale him away from his draughts, to be anointed
in the bath; but he notwithstanding drew the lines upon his belly with
his strigil. And when, as he was washing (as the story goes of him), he
thought of a manner of computing the proportion of gold in King Hiero’s
crown by seeing the water flowing over the bathing-stool, he leaped up
as one possessed or inspired, crying, “I have found it” (εὕρηκα); which
after he had several times repeated, he went his way. But we never yet
heard of a glutton that exclaimed with such vehemence, “I have eaten,”
or of an amorous gallant that ever cried, “I have kissed,” among the
many millions of dissolute debauchees that both this and preceding
ages have produced. Yea, we abominate those that make mention of their
great suppers with too luscious a gust, as men overmuch taken with mean
and abject delights. But we find ourselves in one and the same ecstasy
with Eudoxus, Archimedes, and Hipparchus; and we readily give assent
to Plato when he saith of the mathematics, that while ignorance and
unskilledness make men despise them, they still thrive notwithstanding
by reason of their charmingness, in despite of contempt.

12. These then so great and so many pleasures, that run like perpetual
springs and rills, these men decline and avoid; nor will they permit
those that put in among them so much as to take a taste of them, but
bid them hoist up the little sails of their paltry cock-boats and fly
from them. Nay, they all, both he and she philosophers, beg and entreat
Pythocles, for dear Epicurus’s sake, not to affect or make such account
of the sciences called liberal. And when they cry up and defend one
Apelles, they write of him that he kept himself clean by refraining
himself all along from the mathematics. But as to history—to pass
over their aversedness to other kinds of compositions—I shall only
present you with the words of Metrodorus, who in his treatise of the
Poets writes thus: Wherefore let it never disturb you, if you know not
either what side Hector was of, or the first verses in Homer’s Poem, or
again what is in its middle. But that the pleasures of the body spend
themselves like the winds called Etesian or Anniversary, and utterly
determine when once age is past its vigor, Epicurus himself was not
insensible; and therefore he makes it a problematic question, whether
a sage philosopher, when he is an old man and disabled for enjoyment,
may not still be recreated with having handsome girls to feel and grope
him, being not, it seems, of the mind of old Sophocles, who thanked God
he had at length escaped from this kind of pleasure, as from an untame
and furious master. But, in my opinion, it would be more advisable for
these sensual lechers, when they see that age will dry up so many of
their pleasures, and that, as Euripides saith,

Dame Venus is to ancient men a foe,[145] in the first place to collect
and lay up in store, as against a siege, these other pleasures, as a
sort of provision that will not impair and decay; that then, after
they have celebrated the venereal festivals of life, they may spend
a cleanly after-feast in reading over the historians and poets, or
else in problems of music and geometry. For it would never have come
into their minds so much as to think of these purblind and toothless
gropings and spurtings of lechery, had they but learned, if nothing
more, to write comments upon Homer or Euripides, as Aristotle,
Heraclides, and Dicaearchus did. But I verily persuade myself that
their neglecting to take care for such provisions as these, and finding
all the other things they employed themselves in (as they use to say
of virtue) but insipid and dry, and being wholly set upon pleasure,
and the body no longer supplying them with it, give them occasion to
stoop to do things both mean and shameful in themselves and unbecoming
their age; as well when they refresh their memories with their former
pleasures and serve themselves of old ones (as it were) long since dead
and laid up in pickle for the purpose, when they cannot have fresh
ones, as when again they offer violence to nature by suscitating and
kindling in their decayed bodies, as in cold embers, other new ones
equally senseless, they having not, it seems, their minds stored with
any congenial pleasure that is worth the rejoicing at.

13. As to the other delights of the mind, we have already treated
of them, as they occurred to us. But their aversedness and dislike
to music, that affords us so great delights and such charming
satisfactions, a man could not forget if he would, by reason of the
inconsistency of what Epicurus saith, when he pronounceth in his book
called his Doubts that his wise man ought to be a lover of public
spectacles and to delight above any other man in the music and shows
of the Bacchanals; and yet he will not admit of music problems or
of the critical enquiries of philologists, no, not so much as at a
compotation. Yea, he advises such princes as are lovers of the Muses
rather to entertain themselves at their feasts either with some
narration of military adventures or with the importune scurrilities
of drolls and buffoons, than to engage in disputes about music or in
questions of poetry. For this very thing he had the face to write in
his treatise of Monarchy, as if he were writing to Sardanapalus, or to
Nanarus satrap of Babylon. For neither would a Hiero nor an Attalus
nor an Archelaus be persuaded to make a Euripides, a Simonides, a
Melanippides, a Crates, or a Diodotus rise up from their tables, and
to place such scaramuchios in their rooms as a Cardax, an Agrias, or
a Callias, or fellows like Thrasonides and Thrasyleon, to make people
disorder the house with hollowing and clapping. Had the great Ptolemy,
who was the first that formed a consort of musicians, but met with
these excellent and royal admonitions, would he not, think you, have
thus addressed himself to the Samians:

O Muse, whence art thou thus maligned?

For certainly it can never belong to any Athenian to be in such enmity
and hostility with the Muses. But

No animal accurst by Jove
Music’s sweet charms can ever love.[146]

What sayest thou now, Epicurus? Wilt thou get thee up betimes in
the morning, and go to the theatre to hear the harpers and flutists
play? But if a Theophrastus discourse at the table of Concords, or an
Aristoxenus of Varieties, or if an Aristophanes play the critic upon
Homer, wilt thou presently, for very dislike and abhorrence, clap both
thy hands upon thy ears? And do they not hereby make the Scythian
king Ateas more musical than this comes to, who, when he heard that
admirable flutist Ismenias, detained then by him as a prisoner of war,
playing upon the flute at a compotation, swore he had rather hear his
own horse neigh? And do they not also profess themselves to stand at an
implacable and irreconcilable defiance with whatever is generous and
becoming? And indeed what do they ever embrace or affect that is either
genteel or regardable, when it hath nothing of pleasure to accompany
it? And would it not far less affect a pleasurable way of living, to be
disgusted with perfumes and odors, like beetles and vultures, than to
shun and abhor the conversation of learned critics and musicians? For
what flute or harp ready tuned for a lesson, or

What sweetest consort e’er with artful noise,
Warbled by softest tongue and best tuned voice,

ever gave Epicurus and Metrodorus such content as the disputes and
precepts about consorts gave Aristotle, Theophrastus, Hieronymus,
and Dicaearchus? And also the problems about flutes, rhythms, and
harmonies; as, for instance, why the slenderer of two flutes of the
same longitude should speak flatter?—why, if you raise the pipe, will
all its notes be sharp; and flat again, if you lower it?—and why,
when clapped to another, will it sound flatter; and sharper again,
when taken from it?—why also, if you scatter chaff or dust about the
orchestra of a theatre, will the sound be softened?—and why, when one
would have set up a bronze Alexander for a frontispiece to a stage
at Pella, did the architect advise to the contrary, because it would
spoil the actors’ voices?—and why, of the several kinds of music, will
the chromatic diffuse and the harmonic compose the mind? But now the
several humors of poets, their differing turns and forms of style, and
the solutions of their difficult places, have conjoined with a sort of
dignity and politeness somewhat also that is extremely agreeable and
charming; insomuch that to me they seem to do what was once said by
Xenophon, to make a man even forget the joys of love, so powerful and
overcoming is the pleasure they bring us.

14. Of all this these gentlemen have not the least share, nor do they
so much as pretend or desire to have any. But while they are sinking
and depressing their contemplative part into the body, and dragging it
down by their sensual and intemperate appetites, as by so many weights
of lead, they make themselves appear little better than hostlers or
graziers that still ply their cattle with hay, straw, or grass, looking
upon such provender as the properest and meetest food for them. And is
it not even thus they would swill the mind with the pleasures of the
body, as hogherds do their swine, while they will not allow it can be
gay any longer than it is hoping, feeling, or remembering something
that refers to the body; but will not have it either to receive or seek
for any congenial joy or satisfaction from within itself? Though what
can be more absurd and unreasonable than—when there are two things that
go to make up the man, a body and a soul, and the soul besides hath
the prerogative of governing—that the body should have its peculiar,
natural, and proper good, and the soul none at all, but must sit
gazing at the body and simper at its passions, as if she were pleased
and affected with them, though indeed she be all the while wholly
untouched and unconcerned, as having nothing of her own to choose,
desire, or take delight in? For they should either pull off the vizor
quite, and say plainly that man is all body (as some of them do, that
take away all mental being), or, if they will allow us to have two
distinct natures, they should then leave to each its proper good and
evil, agreeable and disagreeable; as we find it to be with our senses,
each of which is peculiarly adapted to its own sensible, though they
all very strangely intercommune one with another. Now the intellect is
the proper sense of the mind; and therefore that it should have no
congenial speculation, movement, or affection of its own, the attaining
to which should be matter of complacency to it, is the most irrational
thing in the world, if I have not, by Jove, unwittingly done the men
wrong, and been myself imposed upon by some that may perhaps have
calumniated them.

15. Then I said to him: If we may be your judges, you have not; yea,
we must acquit you of having offered them the least indignity; and
therefore pray despatch the rest of your discourse with assurance. How!
said he, and shall not Aristodemus then succeed me, if you are tired
out yourself? Aristodemus said: With all my heart, when you are as much
tired as he is; but since you are yet in your vigor, pray make use of
yourself, my noble friend, and don’t think to pretend weariness. Theon
then replied: What is yet behind, I must confess, is very easy; it
being but to go over the several pleasures contained in that part of
life that consists in action. Now themselves somewhere say that there
is far more satisfaction in doing than in receiving good; and good may
be done many times, it is true, by words, but the most and greatest
part of good consists in action, as the very name of beneficence tells
us and they themselves also attest. For you may remember, continued he,
we heard this gentleman tell us but now what words Epicurus uttered,
and what letters he sent to his friends, applauding and magnifying
Metrodorus,—how bravely and like a spark he quitted the city and went
down to the port to relieve Mithrus the Syrian,—and this, though
Metrodorus did not then do any thing at all. What and how great then
may we presume the pleasures of Plato to have been, when Dion by the
measures he gave him deposed the tyrant Dionysius and set Sicily at
liberty? And what the pleasures of Aristotle, when he rebuilt his
native city Stagira, then levelled with the ground, and brought back
its exiled inhabitants? And what the pleasures of Theophrastus and of
Phidias, when they cut off the tyrants of their respective countries?
For what need a man recount to you, who so well know it, how many
particular persons they relieved, not by sending them a little wheat
or a measure of meal (as Epicurus did to some of his friends), but by
procuring restoration to the banished, liberty to the imprisoned, and
restitution of wives and children to those that had been bereft of
them? But a man could not, if he would, pass by the sottish stupidity
of the man who, though he tramples under foot and vilifies the great
and generous actions of Themistocles and Miltiades, yet writes these
very words to his friends about himself: “You have given a very gallant
and noble testimony of your care of me in the provision of corn you
have made for me, and have declared your affection to me by signs
that mount to the very skies.” So that, should a man but take that
poor parcel of corn out of the great philosopher’s epistle, it might
seem to be the recital of some letter of thanks for the delivery or
preservation of all Greece or of the commons of Athens.

16. We will now forbear to mention that Nature requires very large and
chargeable provisions to be made for accomplishing the pleasures of the
body; nor can the height of delicacy be had in barley bread and lentil
pottage. But voluptuous and sensual appetites expect costly dishes,
Thasian wines, perfumed unguents, and varieties of pastry works,

And cakes by female hands wrought artfully,
Well steep’d in th’ liquor of the gold-wing’d bee;[147]

and besides all this, handsome young lassies too, such as Leontion,
Boidion, Hedia, and Nicedion, that were wont to roam about in
Epicurus’s philosophic garden. But now such joys as suit the mind must
undoubtedly be grounded upon a grandeur of actions and a splendor of
worthy deeds, if men would not seem little, ungenerous, and puerile,
but on the contrary, bulky, firm, and brave. But for a man to be elated
with pleasures, as Epicurus is, like tarpaulins upon the festivals of
Venus, and to vaunt himself that, when he was sick of an ascites, he
notwithstanding called his friends together to certain collations and
grudged not his dropsy the satisfaction of good liquors, and that,
when he called to remembrance the last words of Neocles, he was melted
with a peculiar sort of joy intermixed with tears,—no man in his right
senses would call these true joys or satisfactions. Nay, I will be bold
to say that, if such a thing as that they call a sardonic or grinning
laughter can happen to the mind, it is to be found in these forcings
and crying laughters. But if any will needs have them still called by
the name of joys and satisfactions, let him but yet think how far they
are exceeded by the pleasures that here ensue:

Our counsels have proud Sparta’s glory clipt;

and

Stranger, this is his country Rome’s great star;

and again this,

I know not which to guess thee, man or God.

Now when I set before my eyes the brave achievements of Thrasybulus and
Pelopidas, of Aristides engaged at Plataea and Miltiades at Marathon,
I am here constrained with Herodotus to declare it my opinion, that
in an active state of life the pleasure far exceeds the glory. And
Epaminondas herein bears me witness also, when he saith (as is
reported of him), that the greatest satisfaction he ever received in
his life was that his father and mother had lived to see the trophy
set up at Leuctra when himself was general. Let us then compare
with Epaminondas’s Epicurus’s mother, rejoicing that she had lived
to see her son cooping himself up in a little garden, and getting
children in common with Polyaenus upon the strumpet of Cyzicus. As
for Metrodorus’s mother and sister, how extravagantly rejoiced they
were at his nuptials appears by the letters he wrote to his brother
in answer to his; that is, out of his own books. Nay, they tell us
bellowing that they have not only lived a life of pleasure, but also
exult and sing hymns in the praise of their own living. Now, when our
servants celebrate the festivals of Saturn or go in procession at the
time of the rural bacchanals, you would scarcely brook the hollowing
and din they make, should the intemperateness of their joy and their
insensibleness of decorum make them act and speak such things as these:

Lean down, boy! why dost sit! let’s tope like mad!
Here’s belly-timber store; ne’er spare it, lad.
Straight these huzza like wild. One fills up drink;
Another plaits a wreath, and crowns the brink
O’ th’ teeming bowl. Then to the verdant bays
All chant rude carols in Apollo’s praise;
While one his door with drunken fury smites,
Till he from bed his pretty consort frights.

And are not Metrodorus’s words something like to these when he writes
to his brother thus: It is none of our business to preserve the Greeks,
or to get them to bestow garlands upon us for our wit, but to eat well
and drink good wine, Timocrates, so as not to offend but pleasure our
stomachs. And he saith again, in some other place in the same epistles:
How gay and how assured was I, when I had once learned of Epicurus
the true way of gratifying my stomach; for, believe me, philosopher
Timocrates, our prime good lies at the stomach.

17. In brief, these men draw out the dimensions of their pleasures
like a circle, about the stomach as a centre. And the truth is, it is
impossible for those men ever to participate of generous and princely
joy, such as enkindles a height of spirit in us and sends forth to all
mankind an unmade hilarity and calm serenity, that have taken up a sort
of life that is confined, unsocial, inhuman, and uninspired towards
the esteem of the world and the love of mankind. For the soul of man
is not an abject, little, and ungenerous thing, nor doth it extend its
desires (as polyps do their claws) unto eatables only,—yea, these are
in an instant of time taken off by the least plenitude,—but when its
efforts towards what is brave and generous and the honors and caresses
that accrue therefrom are now in their consummate vigor, this life’s
duration cannot limit them, but the desire of glory and the love of
mankind grasp at whole eternity, and wrestle with such actions and
charms as bring with them an ineffable pleasure, and such as good men,
though never so fain, cannot decline, they meeting and accosting them
on all sides and surrounding them about, while their being beneficial
to many occasions joy to themselves.

As he passes through the throngs in the city,
All gaze upon him as some Deity.[148]

For he that can so affect and move other men as to fill them with joy
and rapture, and to make them long to touch him and salute him, cannot
but appear even to a blind man to possess and enjoy very extraordinary
satisfactions in himself. And hence it comes that such men are both
indefatigable and undaunted in serving the public, and we still hear
some such words from them:

Thy father got thee for the common good;

and

Let’s not give off to benefit mankind.

But what need I instance in those that are consummately good? For if
to one of the middling rank of bad men, when he is just a dying, he
that hath the power over him (whether his God or prince) should but
allow one hour more, upon condition that, after he hath spent that
either in some generous action or in sensual enjoyment, he should then
presently die, who would in this time choose rather to accompany with
Lais or drink Ariusian wine, than to despatch Archias and restore the
Thebans to their liberties? For my part I believe none would. For I
see that even common sword-players, if they are not utter brutes and
savages, but Greek born, when they are to enter the list, though there
be many and very costly dishes set before them, yet take more content
in employing their time in commending their poor wives to some of
their friends, yea, and in conferring freedom on their slaves, than
in gratifying their stomachs. But should the pleasures of the body be
allowed to have some extraordinary matter in them, this would yet be
common to men of action and business.

For they can eat good meat, and red wine drink,[149]

aye, and entertain themselves with their friends, and perhaps with
a greater relish too, after their engagements and hard services,—as
did Alexander and Agesilaus, and (by Jove) Phocion and Epaminondas
too,—than these gentlemen who anoint themselves by the fireside, and
are gingerly rocked about the streets in sedans. Yea, those make but
small account of such pleasures as these, as being comprised in those
greater ones. For why should a man mention Epaminondas’s denying to
sup with one, when he saw the preparations made were above the man’s
estate, but frankly telling his friend, “I thought you had intended
a sacrifice and not a debauch,” when Alexander himself refused Queen
Ada’s cooks, telling her he had better ones of his own, to wit,
travelling by night for his dinner, and a light dinner for his supper,
and when Philoxenus writing to him about some handsome boys, and
desiring to know of him whether he would have him buy them for him,
was within a small matter of being discharged his office for it? And
yet who might better have them than he? But as Hippocrates saith that
of two pains the lesser is obscured by the greater, so the pleasures
that accrue from action and the love of glory, while they cheer and
refresh the mind, do by their transcendency and grandeur obliterate and
extinguish the inferior satisfactions of the body.

18. If then the remembering of former good things (as they affirm) be
that which most contributes to a pleasurable living, not one of us will
then credit Epicurus when he tells us that, while he was dying away in
the midst of the strongest agonies and distempers, he yet bore himself
up with the memory of the pleasures he formerly enjoyed. For a man
may better see the resemblance of his own face in a troubled deep or
a storm, than a smooth and smiling remembrance of past pleasure in a
body tortured with such lancing and rending pains. But now the memories
of past actions no man can put from him that would. For did Alexander,
think you, (or indeed could he possibly) forget the fight at Arbela?
Or Pelopidas the tyrant Leontiadas? Or Themistocles the engagement at
Salamis? For the Athenians to this very day keep an annual festival
for the battle at Marathon, and the Thebans for that at Leuctra;
and so, by Jove, do we ourselves (as you very well know) for that
which Daiphantus gained at Hyampolis, and all Phocis is filled with
sacrifices and public honors. Nor is there any of us that is better
satisfied with what himself hath either eaten or drunk than he is with
what they have achieved. It is very easy then to imagine what great
content, satisfaction, and joy accompanied the authors of these actions
in their lifetime, when the very memory of them hath not yet after five
hundred years and more lost its rejoicing power. The truth is, Epicurus
himself allows there are some pleasures derived from fame. And indeed
why should he not, when he himself had such a furious lechery and
wriggling after glory as made him not only to disown his masters and
scuffle about syllables and accents with his fellow-pedant Democritus
(whose doctrines he stole verbatim), and to tell his disciples there
never was a wise man in the world besides himself, but also to put it
in writing how Colotes performed adoration to him, as he was one day
philosophizing, by touching his knees, and that his own brother Neocles
was used from a child to say, “There neither is, nor ever was in the
world, a wiser man than Epicurus,” and that his mother had just so many
atoms within her as, when they came together, must have produced a
complete wise man? May not a man then—as Callicratidas once said of the
Athenian admiral Conon, that he whored the sea—as well say of Epicurus
that he basely and covertly forces and ravishes Fame, by not enjoying
her publicly but ruffling and debauching her in a corner? For as men’s
bodies are oft necessitated by famine, for want of other food, to prey
against nature upon themselves, a like mischief to this does vain-glory
create in men’s minds, forcing them, when they hunger after praise and
cannot obtain it from other men, at last to commend themselves.

19. And do not they then that stand so well affected towards applause
and fame themselves own they cast away very extraordinary pleasures,
when they decline magistrature, public offices, and the favor and
confidences of princes, from whom Democritus once said the grandest
blessings of human life are derived? For he will never induce any
mortal to believe, that he that could so highly value and please
himself with the attestation of his brother Neocles and the adoration
of his friend Colotes would not, were he clapped by all the Greeks at
the Olympiads, go quite out of his wits and even hollow for joy, or
rather indeed be elated in the manner spoken of by Sophocles,

Puffed like the down of a gray-headed thistle.

If it be a pleasing thing then to be of a good fame, it is on the
contrary afflictive to be of an ill one; and it is most certain that
nothing in the world can be more infamous than want of friendship,
idleness, atheism, debauchery, and negligence. Now these are looked
upon by all men except themselves as inseparable companions of their
party. But unjustly, some one may say. Be it so then; for we consider
not now the truth of the charge, but what fame and reputation they
are of in the world. And we shall forbear at present to mention the
many books that have been written to defame them, and the blackening
decrees made against them by several republics; for that would look
like bitterness. But if the answers of oracles, the providence of the
Gods, and the tenderness and affection of parents to their issue,—if
civil policy, military order, and the office of magistracy be things
to be looked upon as deservedly esteemed and celebrated, it must of
necessity then be allowed also, that they that tell us it is none of
their business to preserve the Greeks, but they must eat and drink so
as not to offend but pleasure their stomachs, are base and ignominious
persons, and that their being reputed such must needs extremely humble
them and make their lives untoward to them, if they take honor and a
good name for any part of their satisfaction.

20. When Theon had thus spoken, we thought good to break up our walk
to rest us awhile (as we were wont to do) upon the benches. Nor did
we continue any long space in our silence at what was spoken; for
Zeuxippus, taking his hint from what had been said, spake to us: Who
will make up that of the discourse which is yet behind? For it hath
not yet received its due conclusion; and this gentleman, by mentioning
divination and providence, did in my opinion suggest as much to us;
for these people boast that these very things contribute in no small
degree to the providing of their lives with pleasure, serenity,
and assurance; so that there must be something said to these too.
Aristodemus subjoined then and said: As to pleasure, I think there hath
been enough said already to evince that, supposing their doctrine to
be successful and to attain its own design, it yet doth but ease us of
fear and a certain superstitious persuasion, but helps us not to any
comfort or joy from the Gods at all; nay, while it brings us to such a
state as to be neither disquieted nor pleased with them, it doth but
render us in the same manner affected towards them as we are towards
the Scythians or Hyrcanians, from whom we expect neither good nor harm.
But if something more must yet be added to what hath been already
spoken, I think I may very well take it from themselves. And in the
first place, they quarrel extremely with those that would take away
all sorrowing, weeping, and sighing for the death of friends, and tell
them that such unconcernedness as arrives to an insensibility proceeds
from some other worse cause, to wit, inhumanity, excessive vain-glory,
or prodigious fierceness, and that therefore it would be better to be
a little concerned and affected, yea, and to liquor one’s eyes and
be melted, with other pretty things of the like kind, which they use
foppishly to affect and counterfeit, that they may be thought tender
and loving-hearted people. For just in this manner Epicurus expressed
himself upon the occasion of the death of Hegesianax, when he wrote to
Dositheus the father and to Pyrson the brother of the deceased person;
for I fortuned very lately to run over his epistles. And I say, in
imitation of them, that atheism is no less an evil than inhumanity and
vain-glory, and into this they would lead us who take away with God’s
anger the comfort we might derive from him. For it would be much better
for us to have something of the unsuiting passion of dauntedness and
fear conjoined and intermixed with our sentiments of a Deity, than
while we fly from it, to leave ourselves neither hope, comfort, nor
assurance in the enjoyment of our good things, nor any recourse to God
in our adversity and misfortunes.

21. We ought, it is true, to remove superstition from the persuasion
we have of the Gods, as we would the gum from our eyes; but if that
be impossible, we must not root out and extinguish with it the belief
which the most have of the Gods; nor is that a dismaying and sour
one either, as these gentlemen feign, while they libel and abuse the
blessed Providence, representing her as a hobgoblin or as some fell and
tragic fury. Yea, I must tell you, there are some in the world that
fear God in an excess, for whom yet it would not be better not so to
fear him. For, while they dread him as a governor that is gentle to the
good and severe to the bad, and are by this one fear, which makes them
not to need many others, freed from doing ill and brought to keep their
wickedness with them in quiet and (as it were) in an enfeebled languor,
they come hereby to have less disquiet than those that indulge the
practice of it and are rash and daring in it, and then presently after
fear and repent of it. Now that disposition of mind which the greater
and ignorant part of mankind, that are not utterly bad, are of towards
God, hath, it is very true, conjoined with the regard and honor they
pay him, a kind of anguish and astonished dread, which is also called
superstition; but ten thousand times more and greater than this are the
good hope and true joy that attend it, which both implore and receive
the whole benefit of prosperity and good success from the Gods only.
And this is manifest by the greatest tokens that can be; for neither do
the discourses of those that wait at the temples, nor the good times
of our solemn festivals, nor any other actions or sights more recreate
and delight us than what we see and do about the Gods ourselves, while
we assist at the public ceremonies, and join in the sacred balls, and
attend at the sacrifices and initiations. For the mind is not then
sorrowful, demiss, and heavy, as she would be if she were addressing
to certain tyrants or cruel torturers; but on the contrary, where she
is most apprehensive and fullest persuaded the Divinity is present,
there she most of all throws off sorrows, tears, and pensiveness, and
lets herself loose to what is pleasing and agreeable, to the very
degree of tipsiness, frolic, and laughter. In amorous concerns, as the
poet said once,

When old man and old wife think of love’s fires,
Their frozen breasts will swell with new desires;

but now in the public processions and sacrifices not only the old man
and the old wife, nor yet the poor and mean man only, but also

The dusty thick-legged drab that turns the mill,

and household-slaves and day-laborers, are strangely elevated and
transported with mirth and jovialty. Rich men as well as princes are
used at certain times to make public entertainments and to keep open
houses; but the feasts they make at the solemnities and sacrifices,
when they now apprehend their minds to approach nearest the Divinity,
have conjoined with the honor and veneration which they pay him a
much more transcending pleasure and satisfaction. Of this, he that
hath renounced God’s providence hath not the least share; for what
recreates and cheers us at the festivals is not the store of good wine
and roast meat, but the good hope and persuasion that God is there
present and propitious to us, and kindly accepts of what we do. From
some of our festivals we exclude the flute and garland; but if God be
not present at the sacrifice, as the solemnity of the banquet, the rest
is but unhallowed, unfeast-like, and uninspired. Indeed the whole is
but ungrateful and irksome to such a man; for he asks for nothing at
all, but only acts his prayers and adorations for fear of the public,
and utters expressions contradictory to his philosophy. And when he
sacrifices, he stands by and looks upon the priest as he kills the
offering but as he doth upon a butcher; and when he hath done, he goes
his way, saying with Menander,

To bribe the Gods I sacrificed my best,
But they ne’er minded me nor my request.

For such a mien Epicurus would have us to put on, and neither to envy
nor to incur the hatred of the common sort by doing ourselves with
displeasure what others do with delight. For, as Evenus saith,

No man can love what he is made to do.

For which very reason they think the superstitious are not pleased
in their minds but in fear while they attend at the sacrifices and
mysteries; though they themselves are in no better condition, if they
do the same things out of fear, and partake not either of as great good
hope as the others do, but are only fearful and uneasy lest they should
come to be discovered cheating and abusing the public, upon whose
account it is that they compose the books they write about the Gods and
the Divine Nature,

Involved, with nothing truly said,
But all around enveloped;

hiding out of fear the real opinions they contain.

22. And now, after the two former ranks of ill and common men, we
will in the third place consider the best sort and most beloved of
the Gods, and what great satisfactions they receive from their clean
and generous sentiments of the Deity, to wit, that he is the Prince
of all good things and the Parent of all things brave, and can no
more do an unworthy thing than he can be made to suffer it. For he is
good, and he that is good can upon no account fall into envy, fear,
anger, or hatred; for it is not proper to a hot thing to cool, but to
heat; nor to a good thing to do harm. Now anger is by nature at the
farthest distance imaginable from complacency, and spleenishness from
placidness, and animosity and turbulence from humanity and kindness.
For the latter of these proceed from generosity and fortitude, but
the former from impotency and baseness. The Deity is not therefore
constrained by either anger or kindnesses; but that is because it is
natural to it to be kind and aiding, and unnatural to be angry and
hurtful. But the great Jove, whose mansion is in heaven and who drives
his winged chariot, is the first that descends downwards and orders
all things and takes the care of them. But of the other Gods one is
surnamed the Distributer, and another the Mild, and a third the Averter
of Evil. And according to Pindar,

Apollo was by mighty Jove designed
Of all the Gods to be to man most kind.

And Diogenes saith, that all things are the Gods’, and friends have
all things common, and good men are the Gods’ friends; and therefore
it is impossible either that a man beloved of the Gods should not be
happy, or that a wise and a just man should not be beloved of the Gods.
Can you think then that they that take away Providence need any other
chastisement, or that they have not a sufficient one already, when
they root out of themselves such vast satisfaction and joy as we that
stand thus affected towards the Deity have? Metrodorus, Polyaenus,
and Aristobulus were the confidence and rejoicing of Epicurus; the
better part of whom he all his lifetime either attended upon in their
sicknesses or lamented at their deaths. So did Lycurgus, when he was
saluted by the Delphic prophetess,

Dear friend to heavenly Jove and all the Gods.

And did Socrates when he believed that a certain Divinity was used
out of kindness to discourse him, and Pindar when he heard Pan sing
one of the sonnets he had composed, but a little rejoice, think you?
Or Phormio, when he thought he had treated Castor and Pollux at his
house? Or Sophocles, when he entertained Aesculapius, as both he
himself believed, and others too, that thought the same with him by
reason of the apparition that then happened? What opinion Hermogenes
had of the Gods is well worth the recounting in his very own words.
“For these Gods,” saith he, “who know all things and can do all things,
are so friendly and loving to me that, because they take care of me, I
never escape them either by night or by day, wherever I go or whatever
I am about. And because they know beforehand what issue every thing
will have, they signify it to me by sending angels, voices, dreams, and
presages.”

23. Very amiable things must those be that come to us from the
Gods; but when these very things come by the Gods too, this is what
occasions vast satisfaction and unspeakable assurance, a sublimity of
mind and a joy that, like a smiling brightness, doth as it were gild
over our good things with a glory. But now those that are persuaded
otherwise obstruct the very sweetest part of their prosperity, and
leave themselves nothing to turn to in their adversity; but when they
are in distress, look only to this one refuge and port, dissolution
and insensibility; just as if in a storm or tempest at sea, some one
should, to hearten the rest, stand up and say to them: Gentlemen,
the ship hath never a pilot in it, nor will Castor and Pollux come
themselves to assuage the violence of the beating waves or to lay the
swift careers of the winds; yet I can assure you there is nothing at
all to be dreaded in all this, for the vessel will be immediately
swallowed up by the sea, or else will very quickly fall off and be
dashed in pieces against the rocks. For this is Epicurus’s way of
discourse to persons under grievous distempers and excessive pains.
Dost thou hope for any good from the Gods for thy piety? It is thy
vanity; for the blessed and incorruptible Being is not constrained by
either angers or kindnesses. Dost thou fancy something better after
this life than what thou hast here? Thou dost but deceive thyself;
for what is dissolved hath no sense, and that which hath no sense is
nothing to us. Aye; but how comes it then, my good friend, that you bid
me eat and be merry? Why, by Jove, because he that is in a great storm
cannot be far off a shipwreck; and your extreme peril will soon land
you upon Death’s strand. Though yet a passenger at sea, when he is got
off from a shattered ship, will still buoy himself up with some little
hope that he may drive his body to some shore and get out by swimming;
but now the poor soul, according to these men’s philosophy.

Has no escape beyond the hoary main.[150]

Yea, she presently evaporates, disperses, and perishes, even before the
body itself; so that it seems her great and excessive rejoicing must be
only for having learned this one sage and divine maxim, that all her
misfortunes will at last determine in her own destruction, dissolution,
and annihilation.

24. But (said he, looking upon me) I should be impertinent, should
I say any thing upon this subject, when we have heard you but now
discourse so fully against those that would persuade us that Epicurus’s
doctrine about the soul renders men more disposed and better pleased to
die than Plato’s doth. Zeuxippus therefore subjoined and said: And must
our present debate be left then unfinished because of that? Or shall we
be afraid to oppose that divine oracle to Epicurus? No, by no means, I
said; and Empedocles tells us that

What’s very good claims to be heard twice.

Therefore we must apply ourselves again to Theon; for I think he was
present at our former discourse; and moreover, he is a young man, and
needs not fear being charged by these young gentlemen with having a bad
memory.

25. Then Theon, like one constrained, said: Well then, if you will
needs have me to go on with the discourse, I will not do as you did,
Aristodemus. For you were shy of repeating what this gentleman spoke,
but I shall not scruple to make use of what you have said; for I think
indeed you did very well divide mankind into three ranks; the first of
wicked and very bad men, the second of the vulgar and common sort, and
the third of good and wise men. The wicked and bad sort then, while
they dread any kind of divine vengeance and punishment at all, and are
by this deterred from doing mischief, and thereby enjoy the greater
quiet, will live both in more pleasure and in less disturbance for it.
And Epicurus is of opinion that the only proper means to keep men from
doing ill is the fear of punishments. So that we should cram them with
more and more superstition still, and raise up against them terrors,
chasms, frights, and surmises, both from heaven and earth, if their
being amazed with such things as these will make them become the more
tame and gentle. For it is more for their benefit to be restrained from
criminal actions by the fear of what comes after death, than to commit
them and then to live in perpetual danger and fear.

26. As to the vulgar sort, besides their fear of what is in hell, the
hope they have conceived of an eternity from the tales and fictions
of the ancients, and their great desire of being, which is both the
earliest and the strongest of all, exceed in pleasure and sweet content
of mind that childish dread. And therefore, when they lose their
children, wives or friends, they would rather have them be somewhere
and still remain, though in misery, than that they should be quite
destroyed, dissolved, and reduced to nothing. And they are pleased when
they hear it said of a dying person, that he goes away or departs,
and such other words as intimate death to be the soul’s remove and not
destruction. And they sometimes speak thus:

But I’ll even there think on my dearest friend;[151]

and thus

What’s your command to Hector? Let me know;
Or to your dear old Priam shall I go?[152]

And (there arising hereupon an erroneous deviation) they are the
better pleased when they bury with their departed friends such arms,
implements, or clothes as were most familiar to them in their lifetime;
as Minos did the Cretan flutes with Glaucus,

Made of the shanks of a dead brindled fawn

And if they do but imagine they either ask or desire any thing of
them, they are glad when they give it them. Thus Periander burnt his
queen’s attire with her, because he thought she had asked for it and
complained she was a-cold. Nor doth an Aeacus, an Ascalaphus, or an
Acheron much disorder them whom they have often gratified with balls,
shows, and music of every sort. But now all men shrink from that face
of death which carries with it insensibility, oblivion, and extinction
of knowledge, as being dismal, grim, and dark. And they are discomposed
when they hear it said of any one, he is perished, or he is gone, or he
is no more; and they show great uneasiness when they hear such words as
these:

Go to the wood-clad earth he must,
And there lie shrivelled into dust,
And ne’er more laugh or drink, or hear
The charming sounds of flute or lyre;

and these.

But from our lips the vital spirit fled
Returns no more to wake the silent dead.[153]

27. Wherefore they must needs cut the very throats of them that shall
with Epicurus tell them, We men were born once for all, and we cannot
be born twice, but our not being must last for ever. For this will
bring them to slight their present good as little, or rather indeed as
nothing at all compared with everlastingness, and therefore to let it
pass unenjoyed and to become wholly negligent of virtue and action,
as men disheartened and brought to a contempt of themselves, as being
but as it were of one day’s continuance and uncertain, and born for no
considerable purpose. For insensibility, dissolution, and the conceit
that what hath no sense is nothing to us, do not at all abate the fear
of death, but rather help to confirm it; for this very thing is it that
nature most dreads,—

But may you all return to mould and wet,[154]

to wit, the dissolution of the soul into what is without knowledge or
sense. Now, while Epicurus would have this to be a separation into
atoms and void, he doth but further cut off all hope of immortality;
to compass which (I can scarce refrain from saying) all men and women
would be well contented to be worried by Cerberus, and to carry water
into the tub full of holes, so they might but continue in being and not
be exterminated. Though (as I said before) there are not very many that
stand in fear of these things, they being but the tenets of old women
and the fabulous stories of mothers and nurses,—and even they that do
fear them yet believe that certain rites of initiation and purgation
will relieve them, by which being cleansed they shall play and dance
in hell for ever, in company with those that have the privilege of a
bright light, clear air, and the use of speech,—still to be deprived of
living disturbs all both young and old. For it seems that we

Impatient love the light that shines on earth,[155]

as Euripides saith. Nor are we easy or without regret when we hear this:

Him speaking thus th’ eternal brightness leaves,
Where night the wearied steeds of day receives.

28. And therefore it is very plain that with the belief of immortality
they take away the sweetest and greatest hopes the vulgar sort have.
And what shall we then think they take away from the good and those
that have led pious and just lives, who expect no ill after death, but
on the contrary most glorious and divine things? For, in the first
place, champions are not used to receive the garland before they have
performed their exercises, but after they have contested and proved
victorious; in like manner is it with those that are persuaded that
good men have the prize of their conquests after this life is ended;
it is marvellous to think to what a pitch of grandeur their virtue
raises their spirits upon the contemplation of those hopes, among the
which this is one, that they shall one day see those men that are now
insolent by reason of their wealth and power, and that foolishly flout
at their betters, undergo just punishment. In the next place, none of
the lovers of truth and the contemplation of being have here their fill
of them; they having but a watery and puddled reason to speculate with,
as it were, through the fog and mist of the body; and yet they still
look upwards like birds, as ready to take their flight to the spacious
and bright region, and endeavor to make their souls expedite and
light from things mortal, using philosophy as a study and preparation
for death. Thus I account death a truly great and accomplished good
thing; the soul being to live there a real life, which here lives not
a waking life, but suffers things most resembling dreams. If then (as
Epicurus saith) the remembrance of a dead friend be a thing every way
complacent; we may easily from thence imagine how great a joy they
deprive themselves of who think they do but embrace and pursue the
phantoms and shades of their deceased familiars, that have in them
neither knowledge nor sense, but who never expect to be with them
again, or to see their dear father and dear mother and sweet wife, nor
have any hopes of that familiarity and dear converse they have that
think of the soul with Pythagoras, Plato, and Homer. Now what their
sort of passion is like to was hinted at by Homer, when he threw into
the midst of the soldiers, as they were engaged, the shade of Aeneas,
as if he had been dead, and afterwards again presented his friends with
him himself,

Coming alive and well, as brisk as ever;

at which, he saith,

They all were overjoyed.[156]

And should not we then,—when reason shows us that a real converse with
persons departed this life may be had, and that he that loves may both
feel and be with the party that affects and loves him,—relinquish these
men that cannot so much as cast off all those airy shades and outside
barks for which they are all their time in lamentation and fresh
afflictions?

29. Moreover, they that look upon death as the commencement of another
and better life, if they enjoy good things, are the better pleased with
them, as expecting much greater hereafter; but if they have not things
here to their minds, they do not much grumble at it, but the hopes of
those good and excellent things that are after death contain in them
such ineffable pleasures and expectances, that they wipe off and wholly
obliterate every defect and every offence from the mind, which, as on
a road or rather indeed in a short deviation out of the road, bears
whatever befalls it with great ease and moderation. But now, as to
those to whom life ends in insensibility and dissolution,—since death
brings to them no removal of evils, though it is afflicting in both
conditions, yet is it more so to those that live prosperously than to
such as undergo adversity. For it cuts the latter but from an uncertain
hope of doing better hereafter; but it deprives the former of a certain
good, to wit, their pleasurable living. And as those medicinal potions
that are not grateful to the palate but yet necessary give sick men
ease, but rake and hurt the well; just so, in my opinion, doth the
philosophy of Epicurus, which promises to those that live miserably
no happiness in death, and to those that do well an utter extinction
and dissolution of the mind, while it quite obstructs the comfort and
solace of the grave and wise and those that abound with good things, by
throwing them down from a happy living into a deprivation of both life
and being. From hence then it is manifest, that the contemplation of
the loss of good things will afflict us in as great a measure as either
the firm hope or present enjoyment of them delights us.

30. Yea, themselves tell us, that the contemplation of future
dissolution leaves them one most assured and complacent good, to wit,
freedom from anxious surmises of incessant and endless evils, and
that Epicurus’s doctrine effects this by stopping the fear of death
by the belief in the soul’s dissolution. If then deliverance from the
expectation of infinite evils be a matter of greatest complacence,
how comes it not to be afflictive to be bereft of eternal good things
and to miss of the highest and most consummate felicity? For not to
be can be good for neither condition, but is on the contrary both
against nature and ungrateful to all that have a being. But those it
eases of the evils of life through the evils of death have, it is very
true, the want of sense to comfort them, while they, as it were, make
their escape from life. But, on the other hand, they that change
from good things to nothing seem to me to have the most dismaying end
of all, it putting a period to their happiness. For Nature doth not
fear insensibility as the entrance upon some new thing, but because
it is the privation of our present good things. For to say that the
destruction of all that we call ours toucheth us not is absurd, for
it toucheth us already by the very apprehension. And insensibility
afflicts not those that are not, but those that are, when they think
what damage they shall sustain by it in the loss of their beings
and in being suffered never to emerge from annihilation. Wherefore
it is neither the dog Cerberus nor the river Cocytus that has made
our fear of death boundless; but the threatened danger of not being,
representing it as impossible for such as are once extinct to shift
back again into being. For we cannot be born twice, and our not being
must last for ever; as Epicurus speaks. For if our end be in not being,
and that be infinite and unalterable, then hath privation of good found
out an eternal evil, to wit, a never ending insensibleness. Herodotus
was much wiser, when he said that God, having given men a taste of the
sweets of life, seems to be envious in this regard,[157] and especially
to those that conceit themselves happy, to whom pleasure is but a bait
for sorrow, they being but permitted to taste of what they must be
deprived of. For what solace or fruition or exultation would not the
perpetual injected thought of the soul’s being dispersed into infinity,
as into a certain huge and vast ocean, extinguish and quell in those
that found their amiable good and beatitude in pleasure? But if it be
true (as Epicurus thinks it is) that most men die in very acute pain,
then is the fear of death in all respects inconsolable; it bringing us
through evils unto a deprivation of good.

31. And yet they are never wearied with their brawling and dunning
of all persons to take the escape of evil for a good, and yet not to
repute privation of good for an evil. But they still confess what
we have asserted, that death hath in it nothing of either good hope
or solace, but that all that is complacent and good is then wholly
extinguished; at which time those men look for many amiable, great, and
divine things, that conceive the minds of men to be unperishable and
immortal, or at least to go about in certain long revolutions of times,
being one while upon earth and another while in heaven, until they are
at last dissolved with the universe and then, together with the sun
and moon, sublimed into an intellective fire. So large a field and one
of so great pleasures Epicurus wholly cuts off, when he destroys (as
hath been said) the hopes and graces we should derive from the Gods,
and by that extinguishes both in our speculative capacity the desire of
knowledge, and in our active the love of glory, and confines and abases
our nature to a poor narrow thing, and that not cleanly neither, to
wit, the content the mind receives by the body, as if it were capable
of no higher good than the escape of evil.

ROMAN QUESTIONS.

_Question 1._ Wherefore do the Romans require a new-married woman
to touch fire and water?

_Solution._ Is it not for one of these reasons; amongst elements
and principles, one is masculine and the other feminine;—one (fire)
hath in it the principles of motion, the other (water) hath the faculty
of a subject and matter? Or is it because fire refines and water
cleanseth, and a married wife ought to continue pure and chaste? Or is
it because fire without moisture doth not nourish, but is adust, and
water destitute of heat is barren and sluggish; so both the male and
female apart are of no force, but a conjunction of both in marriage
completes society? Or is the meaning that they must never forsake each
other, but must communicate in every fortune, and although there be no
goods, yet they may participate with each other in fire and water?

_Question 2._ Why do they light at nuptials five torches, neither
more nor less, which they call waxen tapers?

_Solution._ Whether it be (as Varro saith) that the Praetors use
three, but more are permitted to the Aediles, and married persons do
light the fire at the Aediles’ torches? Or is it that, having use of
many numbers, the odd number was reckoned better and perfecter upon
other accounts, and therefore more adapted to matrimony? For the even
number admits of division, and the equal parts of opposition and
repugnancy, whenas the odd cannot be divided, but being divided into
parts leaves always an inequality. The number five is most matrimonial
of odd numbers, for three is the first odd and two is the first even,
of which five is compounded, as of male and female.

Or rather, because light is a sign of generation, and it is natural to
a woman, for the most part, to bring forth so far as five successively,
and therefore they use five torches? Or is it because they suppose that
married persons have occasion for five Gods, Nuptial Jupiter, Nuptial
Juno, Venus, Suada, and above all the rest Diana, whom women invocate
in their travail and child-bed sickness?

_Question 3._ What is the reason that, seeing there are so many
of Diana’s temples in Rome, the men refrain going into that only which
stands in Patrician Street?

_Solution._ Is it upon the account of the fabulous story, that a
certain man, ravishing a woman that was there worshipping the Goddess,
was torn in pieces by dogs; and hence this superstitious practice
arose, that men enter not in?

_Question 4._ Why do they in all other temples of Diana ordinarily
nail up stags’ horns against the wall, whenas in that of the Aventine
they nail up the horns of cattle?

_Solution._ Was it to put them in mind of an old casualty? For it
is said, that among the Sabines one Antro Coratius had a very comely
cow, far excelling all others in handsomeness and largeness, and was
told by a certain diviner that whoever should offer up that cow in
sacrifice to Diana on the Aventine, his city was determined by fate to
be the greatest in the world and have dominion over all Italy. This
man came to Rome, with an intention to sacrifice his cow there; but
a servant acquainted King Servius privately with this privacy, and
the king making it known to Cornelius the priest, Cornelius strictly
commands Antro to wash in Tiber before he sacrificed, for the law
requires men so to do who would sacrifice acceptably. Wherefore,
whilst Antro went to wash, Servius took the opportunity to sacrifice
the cow to the Goddess, and nailed up the horns to the wall in the
temple. These things are storied by Juba and Varro, only Varro hath not
described Antro by that name, neither doth he say that the Sabine was
choused by Cornelius the priest, but by the sexton.

_Question 5._ Wherefore is it that those that are falsely reported
to be dead in foreign countries, when they return, they receive not by
the doors, but getting up to the roof of the house, they let them in
that way?

_Solution._ Verily the account which Varro gives of this matter
is altogether fabulous. For he saith, in the Sicilian war, when there
was a great naval fight, and a very false report was rumored concerning
many as if they were slain, all of them returning home in a little
time died. But as one of them was going to enter in at his doors, they
shut together against him of their own accord, neither could they be
opened by any that attempted it. This man, falling in a sleep before
the doors, saw an apparition in his sleep advising him to let himself
down from the roof into the house, and doing so, he lived happily and
became an old man; and hence the custom was confirmed to after ages.
But consider if these things be not conformable to some usages of the
Greeks. For they do not esteem those pure nor keep them company nor
suffer them to approach their sacrifices, for whom any funeral was
carried forth or sepulchre made as if they were dead; and they say
that Aristinus, being one that was become an object of this sort of
superstition, sent to Delphi to beg and beseech of the God a resolution
of the anxieties and troubles which he had by reason of the custom then
in force. Pythia answered thus;—

The sacred rites t’ which child-bed folks conform,
See that thou do to blessed Gods perform.

Aristinus, well understanding the meaning of the oracle, puts himself
into the women’s hands, to be washed and wrapped in swaddling clouts,
and sucks the breasts, in the same manner as when he was newly born;
and thus all others do, and such are called Hysteropotmi (i.e. those
for whom a funeral was made while living). But some say that these
ceremonies were before Aristinus, and that the custom was ancient.
Wherefore it is not to be wondered at, if the Romans, when once they
suppose a man buried and to have his lot among the dead, do not think
it lawful for him to go in at the door whereat they that are about to
sacrifice do go out or those that have sacrificed do enter in, but
bid them ascend aloft into the air, and thence descend into the open
court of the house. For they constantly offer their sacrifices of
purification in this open court.

_Question 6._ Wherefore do women salute their relations with their
mouth?

_Solution._ What if it should be (as many suppose) that women were
forbid to drink wine; therefore that those that drank it might not be
undiscovered, but convicted when they met with their acquaintance,
kissing became a custom? Or is it for the reason which Aristotle the
philosopher hath told us? Even that thing which was commonly reported
and said to be done in many places, it seems, was enterprised by the
Trojan women in the confines of Italy. For after the men arrived and
went ashore, the women set the ships on fire, earnestly longing to
be discharged of their roving and seafaring condition; but dreading
their husbands’ displeasure, they fell on saluting their kindred and
acquaintance that met them, by kissing and embracing; whereupon the
husbands’ anger being appeased and they reconciled, they used for the
future this kind of compliment towards them. Or rather might this
usage be granted to women as a thing that gained them reputation and
interest, if they appeared hereby to have many and good kindred and
acquaintance? Or was it that, it being unlawful to marry kinswomen,
a courteous behavior might proceed so far as a kiss, and this was
retained only as a significant sign of kindred and a note of a familiar
converse among them? For in former time they did not marry women nigh
by blood,—as now they marry not aunts or sisters,—but of late they
allowed the marrying of cousins for the following reason. A certain
man, mean in estate, but on the other hand an honest and a popular man
among the citizens, designed to marry his cousin being an heiress,
and to get an estate by her. Upon this account he was accused; but
the people took little notice of the accusation, and absolved him of
the fault, enacting by vote that it might be lawful for any man to
marry so far as cousins, but prohibited it to all higher degrees of
consanguinity.

_Question 7._ Why is a husband forbid to receive a gift from his
wife, and a wife from her husband?

_Solution._ What if the reason be as Solon writes it,—describing
gifts to be peculiar to dying persons, unless a man being entangled by
necessity or wheedled by a woman be enslaved to force which constrains
him, or to pleasure which persuades him,—that thus the gifts of
husbands and wives became suspected? Or is it that they reputed a gift
the basest sign of benevolence (for strangers and they that have no
love for us do give us presents), and so took away such a piece of
flattery from marriage, that to love and be beloved should be devoid of
mercenariness, should be spontaneous and for its own sake, and not for
any thing else? Or because women, being corrupted by receiving gifts,
are thereby especially brought to admit strangers, did it seem to be
a weighty thing to require them to love their own husbands that give
them nothing? Or was it because all things ought to be common between
them, the husbands’ goods being the wives’, and the wives’ goods the
husbands’? For he that accepts that which is given learns thereby to
esteem that which is not given the property of another; so that, by
giving but a little to each other, they strip each other of all.

_Question 8._ Why were they prohibited from taking a gift of a
son-in-law or of a father-in-law?

_Solution._ Is it not of a son-in-law, that a man may not
seem to convey a gift to his wife by his father’s hands? and of a
father-in-law, because it seems just that he that doth not give should
not receive?

_Question 9._ Wherefore is it that they that have wives at home,
if they be returning out of the country or from any remote parts, do
send a messenger before, to acquaint them that they be at hand?

_Solution._ Is not this an argument that a man believes his
wife to be no idle gossip, whereas to come upon her suddenly and
unexpectedly has a show as though he came hastily to catch her and
observe her behavior? Or do they send the good tidings of their coming
beforehand, as to them that are desirous of them and expect them?
Or rather is it that they desire to enquire concerning their wives
whether they are in health, and that they may find them at home looking
for them? Or because, when the husbands are wanting, the women have
more family concerns and business upon their hands, and there are
more dissensions and hurly-burly among those that are within doors;
therefore, that the wife may free herself from these things and give a
calm and pleasant reception to her husband, she hath forewarning of his
coming?

_Question 10._ Wherefore do men in divine service cover their
heads; but if they meet any honorable personages when they have their
cloaks on their heads, they are uncovered?

_Solution._ The latter part of the question seems to augment the
difficulty of the former. If now the story told of Aeneas be true, that
whilst Diomedes was passing by he offered a sacrifice with his head
covered, it is rational and consequent that, while we cover our heads
before our enemies, when we meet our friends and good men we should
be uncovered. This behavior before the Gods therefore is not their
peculiar right, but accidental, continuing to be observed since that
example of Aeneas.

If there is any thing further to be said, consider whether we ought not
to enquire only after the reason why men in divine service are covered,
the other being the consequence of it. For they that are uncovered
before men of greater power do not thereby ascribe honor unto them, but
rather remove envy from them, that they might not seem to demand or to
endure the same kind of reverence which the Gods have, or to rejoice
that they are served in the same manner as they. But they worship the
Gods in this manner, either showing their unworthiness in all humility
by the covering of the head, or rather fearing that some unlucky and
ominous voice should come to them from abroad whilst they are praying;
therefore they pluck up their cloaks about their ears. That they
strictly observed these things is manifest in this, that when they went
to consult the oracle, they made a great din all about by the tinkling
of brass kettles. Or is it as Castor saith, that the Roman usages were
conformable to the Pythagoric notion that the daemon within us stands
in need of the Gods without us, and we make supplication to them with a
covered head, intimating the body’s hiding and absconding of the soul?

_Question 11._ Why do they sacrifice to Saturn with an uncovered
head?

_Solution._ Is this the reason, that, whereas Aeneas hath
instituted the covering of the head in divine service, Saturn’s
sacrifice was much more ancient? Or is it that they are covered before
celestial Gods, but reckon Saturn an infernal and terrestrial God? Or
is it that nothing of the truth ought to be obscure and darkened, and
the Romans repute Saturn to be the father of truth?

_Question 12._ Why do they esteem Saturn the father of truth?

_Solution._ Is it not the reason that some philosophers believe
that Κρόνος (_Saturn_) is the same with Χρόνος (_time_), and
time finds out truth? Or is it for that which was fabled of Saturn’s
age, that it was most just and most likely to participate of truth?

_Question 13._ Why do they sacrifice to Honor (a God so-called)
with a bare head?

_Solution._ Is it because glory is splendid, illustrious, and
unveiled, for which cause men are uncovered before good and honorable
persons; and for this reason they thus worship the God that bears the
name of honor?

_Question 14._ Why do sons carry forth their parents at funerals
with covered heads, but the daughters with uncovered and dishevelled
hair?

_Solution._ Is the reason because fathers ought to be honored by
their sons as Gods, but be lamented by their daughters as dead, and
so the law hath distributed to both their proper part? Or is it that
what is not the fashion is fit for mourning? For it is more customary
for women to appear publicly with covered heads, and for men with
uncovered. Yea, among the Greeks, when any sad calamity befalls them,
the women are polled close but the men wear their hair long, because
the usual fashion for men is to be polled and for women to wear their
hair long. Or was it enacted that sons should be covered, for the
reason we have above mentioned (for verily, saith Varro, they surround
their fathers’ sepulchres at funerals, reverencing them as the temples
of the Gods; and having burnt their parents, when they first meet with
a bone, they say the deceased person is deified), but for women was it
not lawful to cover their heads at funerals? History now tells us that
the first that put away his wife was Spurius Carbilius, by reason of
barrenness; the second was Sulpicius Gallus, seeing her pluck up her
garments to cover her head; the third was Publius Sempronius, because
she looked upon the funeral games.

_Question 15._ What is the reason that, esteeming Terminus a
God (to whom they offer their Terminalia), they sacrifice no living
creature to him?

_Solution._ Was it that Romulus set no bounds to the country,
that it might be lawful for a man to make excursions, to rob, and to
reckon every part of the country his own (as the Spartan said) wherever
he should pitch his spear; but Numa Pompilius, being a just man and a
good commonwealthsman and a philosopher, set the boundaries towards the
neighboring countries, and dedicated those boundaries to Terminus as
the bishop and protector both of friendship and of peace, and it was
his opinion that it ought to be preserved pure and undefiled from blood
and slaughter?

_Question 16._ Why is it that the temple of Matuta is not to be
gone into by maid-servants; but the ladies bring in one only, and her
they box and cuff?

_Solution._ If to baste this maid be a sign that they ought not
to enter, then they prohibit others according to the fable. For Ino,
being jealous of her husband’s loving the servant-maid, is reported to
have fell outrageously upon her son. The Grecians say the maid was of
an Aetolian family, and was called Antiphera. Therefore with us also in
Chaeronea the sexton, standing before the temple of Leucothea (Matuta)
holding a wand in his hand, makes proclamation that no man-servant nor
maid-servant, neither man nor woman Aetolian, should enter in.

_Question 17._ Why do they not supplicate this Goddess for good
things for their own children, but for their brethren’s and sisters’
children?

_Solution._ Was it because Ino was a lover of her sister and
nursed up her children, but had hard fortune in her own children? Or
otherwise, in that it is a moral and good custom, and makes provision
of much benevolence towards relations?

_Question 18._ Why do many of the richer sort pay tithe of their
estates to Hercules?

_Solution._ Is this the reason, that Hercules sacrificed the tenth
part of Geryon’s oxen at Rome? Or that he freed the Romans from the
decimation under the Etrurians? Or that these things have no sufficient
ground of credit from history, but that they sacrificed bountifully to
Hercules, as to a certain monstrous glutton and gormandizer of good
cheer? Or did they rather do it, restraining extravagant riches as a
nuisance to the commonwealth, as it were to diminish something of that
thriving constitution that grows up to the highest pitch of corpulency;
being of opinion that Hercules was most of all honored with and
rejoiced in these frugalities and contractions of abundance, and that
he himself was frugal, content with a little, and every way sparing in
his way of living?

_Question 19._ Why do they take the month of January for the
beginning of the new year?

_Solution._ Anciently March was reckoned the first, as is plain
by many other marks and especially by this, that the fifth month from
March was called Quintilis, and the sixth Sextilis, and so forward
to the last. December was so called, being reckoned the tenth from
March; hence it came to pass that some are of opinion and do affirm
that the Romans formerly did not complete the year with twelve months,
but with ten only, allotting to some of the months above thirty days.
But others give us an account that, as December is the tenth from
March, January is the eleventh and February the twelfth; in which month
they use purifications, and perform funeral rites for the deceased
upon the finishing of the year; but this order of the months being
changed, they now make January the first, because on the first day
of this month (which day they call the Kalends of January) the first
consuls were constituted, the kings being deposed. But some speak
with a greater probability, which say that Romulus, being a warlike
and martial man and reputing himself the son of Mars, set March in
the front of all the months, and named it from Mars; but Numa again,
being a peaceable prince and ambitious to bring off the citizens from
warlike achievements, set them upon husbandry, gave the pre-eminence
to January, and brought Janus into a great reputation, as he was more
addicted to civil government and husbandry than to warlike affairs. Now
consider whether Numa hath not pitched upon a beginning of the year
most suitable to our natural disposition. For there is nothing at all
in the whole circumvolution of things naturally first or last, but by
law or custom some appoint one beginning of time, some another; but
they do best who take this beginning from after the winter solstice,
when the sun, ceasing to make any further progress, returns and
converts his course again to us. For there is then a kind of tropic
in nature itself, which verily increaseth the time of light to us and
shortens the time of darkness, and makes the Lord and Ruler of the
whole current of nature to approach nearer to us.

_Question 20._ When the women beautify the temple of the Goddess
appropriate to women, which they call Bona, why do they bring no myrtle
into the house, although they be zealous of using all budding and
flowering vegetables?

_Solution._ Is not the reason (as the fabulous write the story)
this, that the wife of Faulius a diviner, having drunk wine secretly
and being discovered, was whipped by her husband with myrtle rods;
hence the women bring in no myrtle, but offer to her a drink-offering
of wine, which they call milk? Or is it this, that, as they abstain
from many things, so especially they reserve themselves chaste from all
things that appertain to venery when they perform that divine service;
for they do not only turn their husbands out of doors but banish from
the house every male kind, when they exercise this canonical obedience
to their Goddess. They therefore reject myrtle as an abomination, it
being consecrated to Venus; and the Venus whom at this day they call
Murcia they anciently called Myrtia, as it would seem.

_Question 21._ Why do the Latins worship a woodpecker, and all of
them abstain strictly from this bird?

_Solution._ Is it because one Picus by the enchantments of his
wife transformed himself, and becoming a woodpecker uttered oracles,
and gave oraculous answers to them that enquired? Or, if this be
altogether incredible and monstrous, there is another of the romantic
stories more probable, about Romulus and Remus, when they were exposed
in the open field, that not only a she-wolf gave them suck, but a
certain woodpecker flying to them fed them; for even now it is very
usual that in meads and groves where a woodpecker is found there is
also a wolf, as Nigidius writes. Or rather, as they deem other birds
sacred to various Gods, so do they deem this sacred to Mars? For it is
a daring and fierce bird, and hath so strong a beak as to drill an oak
to the heart by pecking, and cause it to fall.

_Question 22._ Why are they of opinion that Janus was
double-faced, and do describe and paint him so?

_Solution._ Was it because he was a native Greek of Perrhaebia
(as they story it), and going down into Italy and cohabiting with the
barbarians of the country, changed his language and way of living? Or
rather because he persuaded those people of Italy that were savage and
lawless to a civil life, in that he converted them to husbandry and
formed them into commonwealths?

_Question 23._ Why do they sell things which pertain to funerals
in the temple of Libitina, seeing they are of opinion that Libitina is
Venus?

_Solution._ Was it that this was one of the wise institutions of
King Numa, that they might learn not to esteem these things irksome
nor fly from them as a defilement? Or rather is it to put us in
mind that whatever is born must die, there being one Goddess that
presides over them that are born and those that die? And at Delphi
there is the statue of Venus Epitymbia (on a tomb), to which at their
drink-offerings they call forth the ghosts of the deceased.

_Question 24._ Why have they three beginnings and appointed
periods in the months which have not the same interval of days between?

_Solution._ What if it be this (as Juba writes), that on the
Kalends the magistrates called (καλεῖν) the people, and proclaimed
the Nones for the fifth, while the Ides they esteemed an holy day? Or
rather that they who define time by the variations of the moon have
observed that the moon comes under three greatest variations monthly;
the first is when it is obscured, making a conjunction with the sun;
the second is when it gets out of the rays of the sun and makes her
first appearance after the sun is down; the third is at her fulness,
when it is full moon. They call her disappearance and obscurity the
Kalends, for every thing hid and privy they call _clam_, and
_celare_ is to hide. The first appearance they call the Nones, by
a most fit notation of names, it being the new moon (novilunium); for
they call it new moon as we do. Ides are so called either by reason
of the fairness and clear form (εἶδος) of the moon standing forth in
her complete splendor, or from the name of Jupiter (Διός). But in this
matter we are not to search for the exact number of days, nor to abuse
this approximate mode of reckoning; seeing that even at this day, when
the science of astronomy has made so great increase, the inequality
of the motion and course of the moon surpasseth all experience of
mathematicians and cannot be reduced to any certain rule of reason.

_Question 25._ Why do they determine that the days after the
Kalends, Nones, and Ides are unfit to travel or go a long journey in?

_Solution._ Was it (as most men think, and Livy tells us) because
on the next day after the Ides of Quintilis (which they now call July),
the tribunes of the soldiery marching forth, the army was conquered
by the Gauls in a battle about the river Allia and lost the city,
whereupon this day was reckoned unlucky; and superstition (as it loves
to do) extended this observation further, and subjected the next days
after the Nones and Kalends to the same scrupulosity? Or what if this
notion meet with much contradiction? For it was on another day they
were defeated in battle, which they call Alliensis (from the river) and
greatly abominate is unsuccessful; and whereas there be many unlucky
days, they do not observe them in all the months alike, but every one
in the month it happens in, and it is most improbable that all the next
days after the Nones and Kalends simply considered should contract
this superstition. Consider now whether—as they consecrated the first
of the months to the Olympic Gods, and the second to the infernals,
wherein they solemnize some purifications and funeral rites to the
ghosts of the deceased—they have so constituted the three which have
been spoken of, as it were, the chief and principal days for festival
and holy days, designating the next following these to daemons and
deceased persons, which days they esteemed unfortunate and unfit for
action. And also the Grecians, worshipping their Gods at the new
of the moon, dedicated the next day to heroes and daemons, and the
second of the cups was mingled on the behalf of the male and female
heroes. Moreover, time is altogether a number; and unity, which is the
foundation of a number, is of a divine nature. The number next is two,
opposite to the first, and is the first of even numbers. But an even
number is defective, imperfect, and indefinite; as again an odd number
is determinate, definite, and complete. Therefore the Nones succeed
the Kalends on the fifth day, the Ides follow the Nones on the ninth,
for odd numbers do determine the beginnings. But those even numbers
which are next after the beginnings have not that pre-eminence nor
influence; hence on such days they take not any actions or journey in
hand. Wherefore that of Themistocles hath reason in it. “The Day after
the feast contended with the Feast-day, saying that the Feast-day had
much labor and toil, but she (the Day after the feast) afforded the
fruition of the provision made for the Feast-day, with much leisure and
quietness. The Feast-day answered after this wise: Thou speakest truth;
but if I had not been, neither hadst thou been.” These things spake
Themistocles to the Athenian officers of the army, who succeeded him,
signifying that they could never have made any figure in the world had
not he saved the city.

Since therefore every action and journey worth our diligent management
requires necessary provision and preparation, but the Romans of old
made no family provision on feast-days, nor were careful for any thing
but that they might attend divine service,—and this they did with all
their might, as even now the priests enjoin them in their proclamations
when they proceed to the sacrifices,—in like manner they did not rush
presently after their festival solemnities upon a journey or any
enterprise (because they were unprovided), but finished that day in
contriving domestic affairs and fitting themselves for the intended
occasion abroad. And as even at this day, after they have said their
prayers and finished their devotion, they are wont to stay and sit
still in the temples, so they did not join working days immediately to
holy days, but made some interval and distance between them, secular
affairs bringing many troubles and distractions along with them.

_Question 26._ Why do women wear for mourning white mantles and
white kerchiefs?

_Solution._ What if they do this in conformity to the Magi, who,
as they say, standing in defiance of death and darkness, do fortify
themselves with bright and splendid robes? Or, as the dead corpse is
wrapped in white, so do they judge it meet that the relations should be
conformable thereto? For they beautify the body so, since they cannot
the soul; wherefore they wish to follow it as having gone before, pure
and white, being dismissed after it hath fought a great and various
warfare. Or is it that what is very mean and plain is most becoming
in these things? For garments dyed of a color argue either luxury or
vanity. Neither may we say less of black than of sea-green or purple,
“Verily garments are deceitful, and so are colors.” And a thing that
is naturally black is not dyed by art but by nature, and is blended
with an intermixed shade. It is white only therefore that is sincere,
unmixed, free from the impurity of a dye, and inimitable; therefore
most proper to those that are buried. For one that is dead is become
simple, unmixed, and pure, freed from the body no otherwise than from
a tingeing poison. In Argos they wear white in mourning, as Socrates
saith, vestments rinsed in water.

_Question 27._ Why do they repute every wall immaculate and
sacred, but the gates not so?

_Solution._ Is it (as Varro hath wrote) that the wall is to be
accounted sacred, that they might defend it cheerfully and even lay
down their lives for it? Upon this very account it appears that Romulus
slew his brother, because he attempted to leap over a sacred and
inaccessible place, and to render it transcendible and profane; but it
could not possibly be that the gates should be kept sacred, through
which they carried many things that necessity required, even dead
corpses. When they built a city from the foundation, they marked out
with a plough the place on which they intended to build it, yoking a
bull and a cow together; but when they did set out the bounds of the
walls, measuring the space of the gates, they lifted up the ploughshare
and carried the plough over it, believing that all the ploughed part
should be sacred and inviolable.

_Question 28._ Why do they prohibit the children to swear by
Hercules within doors, but command them to go out of doors to do it?

_Solution._ Is the reason (as some say) that they are of opinion
that Hercules was not delighted in a domestic life, but chose rather
to live abroad in the fields? Or rather because he was none of their
native country Gods, but a foreigner? For neither do they swear by
Bacchus within doors, he being a foreigner, if it be he whom the Greeks
call Dionysus. Or what if these things are uttered in sport to amuse
children; and is this, on the contrary, for a restraint of a frivolous
and rash oath, as Favorinus saith? For that which is done, as it were,
with preparation causes delay and deliberation. If a man judges as
Favorinus doth of the things recorded about Hercules, it would seem
that this was not common to other Gods, but peculiar to him; for
history tells us that he had such a religious veneration for an oath,
that he swore but once only to Phyleus, son of Augeas. Wherefore the
Pythia upbraids the Lacedaemonians with such swearing, as though it
would be more laudable and better to pay their vows than to swear.

_Question 29._ Why do they not permit the new married woman
herself to step over the threshold of the house, but the bridemen lift
her over?

_Solution._ What if the reason be that they, taking their first
wives by force, brought them thus into their houses, when they went
not in of their own accord? Or is it that they will have them seem to
enter into that place as by force, not willingly, where they are about
to lose their virginity? Or is it a significant ceremony to show that
she is not to go out or leave her dwelling-place till she is forced,
even as she goes in by force? For with us also in Boeotia they burn
the axletree of a cart before the doors, intimating that the spouse is
bound to remain there, the instrument of carriage being destroyed.

_Question 30._ Why do the bridemen that bring in the bride require
her to say, “Where thou Caius art, there am I Caia”?

_Solution._ What if the reason be that by mutual agreement she
enters presently upon participation of all things, even to share in
the government, and that this is the meaning of it, Where thou art
lord and master of the family, there am I also dame and mistress of
the family; while these common names they use promiscuously, as the
lawyers do Caius, Seius, Lucius, Titius, and the philosophers use the
names of Dion and Theon? Or is it from Caia Secilia, an honest and good
woman, married to one of Tarquinius’s sons, who had her statue of brass
erected in the temple of Sancus? On this statue were anciently hanged
sandals and spindles, as significant memorials of her housewifery and
industry.

_Question 31._ Why is that so much celebrated name Thalassius sung
at nuptials?

_Solution._ Is it not from wool-spinning? For the Romans call
the Greek τάλαρος (_wool-basket_) _talasus_. Moreover, when
they have introduced the bride, they spread a fleece under her; and
she, having brought in with her a distaff and a spindle, all behangs
her husband’s door with woollen yarn? Or it may be true, as historians
report, that there was a certain young man famous in military
achievements, and also an honest man, whose name was Thalassius; now
when the Romans seized by force on the Sabine daughters coming to
see the theatric shows, a comely virgin for beauty was brought to
Thalassius by some of the common sort of people and retainers to him,
crying out aloud (that they might go the more securely, and that none
might stop them or take the wench from them) that she was carried
as a wife to Thalassius; upon which the rest of the rabble, greatly
honoring Thalassius, followed on and accompanied them with their loud
acclamations, praying for and praising Thalassius; that proving a
fortunate match, it became a custom to others at nuptials to call over
Thalassius, as the Greeks do Hymenaeus.[158]

_Question 32._ Why do they that throw the effigies of men from a
wooden bridge into the river, in the month of May, about the full moon,
call those images Argives?

_Solution._ Was it that the barbarians that of old inhabited about
that place did in this manner destroy the Grecians which they took? Or
did their so much admired Hercules reform their practice of killing
strangers, and teach them this custom of representing their devilish
practice by casting in of images? The ancients have usually called all
Grecians Argives. Or else it may be that, since the Arcadians esteemed
the Argives open enemies by reason of neighborhood, they that belonged
to Evander, flying from Greece and taking up their situation in Italy,
kept up that malignity and enmity.

_Question 33._ Why would they not in ancient times sup abroad
without their sons, whilst they were in nonage?

_Solution._ Was not this custom brought in by Lycurgus, when he
introduced the boys to the public mess, that they might be inured
to use of pleasures modestly, not savagely and rudely, having their
superiors by them as overseers and observers? Verily it is of no small
concernment that parents should carry themselves with all gravity
and sobriety in the presence of their children. For when old men are
debauched, it will necessarily follow (as Plato saith) that young men
will be most debauched.

_Question 34._ What is the reason that, when the other Romans
did offer their offerings and libations to the dead in the month of
February, Decimus Brutus (as Cicero saith) did it in December? He
verily was the first who, entering upon Lusitania, passed from thence
with his army over the river Lethe.

_Solution._ May it not be that, as many were wont to perform
funeral rites in the latter part of the day and end of the month, it is
rational to believe that at the return of the year and end of the month
also he would honor the dead? For December is the last month. Or were
those adorations paid to the infernal Gods, and was it the season of
the year to honor them when all sorts of fruits had attained ripeness?
Or is it because they move the earth at the beginning of seed-time,
and it is most meet then to remember the ghosts below? Or is it that
this month is by the Romans consecrated to Saturn, whom they reckon to
be one of the infernal Gods and not of the supernal? Or that whilst
the great feast of Saturnals did last, thought to be attended with the
greatest feasting and voluptuous enjoyments, it was judged meet to crop
off some first-fruits of these for the dead? Or what if it be a mere
lie that only Brutus did sacrifice to the dead in this month, since
they solemnize funeral rites for Laurentia and offer drink-offerings at
her tomb in the month of December?

_Question 35._ Why do they adore Laurentia so much, seeing she was
a strumpet?

_Solution._ They say that Acca Laurentia, the nurse of Romulus,
was diverse from this, and her they ascribe honor to in the month of
April. But this other Laurentia, they say, was surnamed Fabula, and
she became noted on this occasion. A certain sexton that belonged to
Hercules, as it seems, leading an idle life, used to spend most of his
days at draughts and dice; and on a certain time, when it happened
that none of those that were wont to play with him and partake of his
sport were present, being very uneasy in himself, he challenged the
God to play a game at dice with him for this wager, that if he got the
game he should receive some boon from the God, if he lost it he would
provide a supper for the God and a pretty wench for him to lie with.
Whereupon choosing two dice, one for himself and the other for the
God, and throwing them, he lost the game; upon which, abiding by his
challenge, he prepared a very splendid table for the God, and picking
up Laurentia, a notorious harlot, he set her down to the good cheer;
and when he had made a bed for her in the temple, he departed and shut
the doors after him. The report went that Hercules came, but had not
to do with her after the usual manner of men, and commanded her to go
forth early in the morning into the market-place, and whomsoever she
first happened to meet with, him she should especially set her heart
upon and procure him to be her copemate. Laurentia accordingly arising
and going forth happened to meet with a certain rich man, a stale
bachelor, whose name was Taruntius. He lying with her made her whilst
he lived the governess of his house, and his heiress when he died; some
time after, she died and left her estate to the city, and therefore
they have her in so great a reputation.

_Question 36._ Why do they call one gate at Rome the Window, just
by which is the bed-chamber of Fortune, so called?

_Solution._ Was it because Servius, who became the most successful
king, was believed to have conversed with Fortune, who came in to him
at a window? Or may this be but a fable; and was it that Tarquinius
Priscus the king dying, his wife Tanaquil, being a discreet and royal
woman, putting her head out at a window, propounded Servius to the
citizens, and persuaded them to proclaim him king; and that this place
had the name of it?

_Question 37._ Why is it that, of the things dedicated to the
Gods, the law permits only the spoils taken in war to be neglected and
by time to fall into decay, and permits them not to have any veneration
nor reparation?

_Solution._ Is this the reason, that men may be of opinion that
the renown of ancestors fades away, and may always be seeking after
some fresh monument of fortitude? Or rather because time wears out the
marks of contention with our enemies, and to restore and renew them
were invidious and malicious? Neither among the Greeks are those men
renowned who were the first erectors of stone or brass trophies.

_Question 38._ Why did Q. Metellus, being a high priest and
otherwise reputed a wise man and a statesman, prohibit the use of
divination from birds after the Sextile month, now called August?

_Solution._ Is it not that—as we make such observations about noon
or early in the day, and also in the beginning or middle of the month
(when the moon is new or increasing), but beware of the times of the
days or month’s decline as unlucky—so he also was of opinion that the
time of year after eight months was, as it were, the evening of the
year, when it declined and hastened towards an end? Or is it because
they must use thriving and full-grown birds? For such are in summer;
but towards autumn some are moulting and sickly, others chickens and
unfledged, others altogether vanished and fled out of the country by
reason of the season of the year.

_Question 39._ Why is it unlawful for such as are not mustered
(although they be otherwise conversant in the army) to slay an enemy or
wound him?

_Solution._ This thing Cato Senior hath made clear in a certain
epistle, writing to his son and commanding him, if he be discharged of
the army having fulfilled his time there, to return; but if he stay, to
take commission from the general to march forth in order to wounding
and slaying the enemy. Is it the reason, that necessity alone can give
warrant for the killing of a man, while he that doth this illegally and
without commission is a murderer? Therefore Cyrus commended Chrysantas
that, when he was about to slay an enemy and had lifted up his scimitar
to take his blow, hearing a retreat sounded, he let the man alone and
smote him not, as being prohibited. Or is it that, if a man conflicts
and fights with his enemies and falls under a consternation, he ought
to be liable to answer for it, and not escape punishment? For verily
he doth not advantage his side so much by smiting and wounding him,
as he doth mischief by turning his back and flying. Therefore he that
is disbanded is freed from martial laws; but when he doth petition
to perform the office of a soldier, he doth again subject himself to
military discipline and put himself under the command of his general.

_Question 40._ Wherefore was it unlawful for a priest of Jupiter
to be anointed abroad in the air?

_Solution._ Was it not because it was neither honest nor decent to
strip the sons naked whilst the father looked on, nor the son-in-law
whilst the father-in-law looked on? Neither in ancient times did they
wash together. Verily Jupiter is the father, and that which is abroad
in the open air may be especially said to be as it were in the sight
of Jupiter. Or is it thus? As it is a profane thing for him to strip
himself naked in the temple or holy place, so did they reverence the
open air and firmament, as being full of Gods and Daemons? Wherefore we
do many necessary things within doors, hiding and covering ourselves in
our houses from the sight of the Gods. Or is it that some things are
enjoined to the priest only, other things to all by a law delivered by
the priest? With us (in Boeotia) to wear a crown, to wear long hair,
to carry iron arms, and not to enter the Phocian borders are peculiar,
proper pieces of the magistrate’s service; but not to taste autumnal
fruits before the autumnal equinox, and not to cut a vine before the
spring equinox, are things required of all by the magistrate. For each
of these has its season. After the same manner (as it appears) among
the Romans it is peculiar to the priest neither to make use of a horse,
nor to be absent from home in a journey more than three nights, nor to
put off his cap, on which account he is called Flamen.[159] Many other
things are enjoined to all sorts of men by the priest; of which one is
not to be anointed abroad in the open air. For the Romans have a great
prejudice against dry unction; and they are of opinion that nothing
hath been so great a cause to the Grecians of slavery and effeminacy as
their fencing and wrestling schools, insinuating so much debauchery and
idleness into the citizens, yea, vicious sloth and buggery; yea, that
they destroyed the very bodies of youths with sleeping, perambulations,
dancing, and delicious feeding, whereby they insensibly fell from the
use of arms, and instead of being good soldiers and horsemen, loved to
be called nimble, good wrestlers, and pretty men. It is hard for them
to avoid these mischiefs who are unclothed in the open air; but they
that are anointed within doors and cure themselves at home do commit
none of these vices.

_Question 41._ Why had the ancient coin on one side the image of
double-faced Janus stamped, and on the other side the stern or stem of
a ship?

_Solution._ What if it be (as they commonly say) in honor of
Saturn, that sailed over into Italy in a ship? Or, if this be no more
than what may be said of many others besides (for Janus, Evander, and
Aeneas all came by sea into Italy), a man may take this to be more
probable: whereas some things serve for the beauty of a city, some
things for necessary accommodation, the greatest part of the things
that beautify a city is a good constitution of government, and the
greatest part for necessary accommodation is good trading; whereas
now Janus had erected a good frame of government among them, reducing
them to a sober manner of life, and the river being navigable afforded
plenty of all necessary commodities, bringing them in partly from the
sea and partly from the out-borders of the country, their coin had a
significant stamp, on one side the double-faced head of the legislator
(as hath been said) by reason of the change made by him in their
affairs, and on the other a small ship because of the river. They used
also another sort of coin, having engraven on it an ox, a sheep, and a
sow, to show that they traded most in such cattle, and got their riches
from these; hence were many of the names among the ancients derived, as
Suillii, Bubulci, and Porcii, as Fenestella tells us.

_Question 42._ Why do they use the temple of Saturn for a chamber
of public treasury, as also an office of record for contracts?

_Solution._ Is not this the reason, because this saying hath
obtained credit, that there was no avarice or injustice among men while
Saturn ruled, but faith and righteousness? Or was it that this God
presided over the fruits of the field and husbandry? For the sickle
signified as much, and not, as Antimachus was persuaded and wrote with
Hesiod,—

With crooked falk Saturn ’gainst heavens fought,
Cut off his father’s privities, foul bout.

Money is produced from plenty of fruit and the vent of them, therefore
they make Saturn the author and preserver of their felicity. That
which confirms this is that the conventions assembled every ninth day
in the market-place (which they call Nundinae) they reckon sacred to
Saturn, because the abundance of fruit gave the first occasion of
buying and selling. Or are these things far-fetched, and was the first
that contrived this Saturnine chamber of bank Valerius Publicola, upon
the suppression of the kings, being persuaded it was a strong place,
conspicuous, and not easily undermined by treachery?

_Question 43._ Wherefore did ambassadors, from whencesoever
they came to Rome, go to Saturn’s temple, and there have their names
recorded before the treasurers?

_Solution._ Was this the cause, that Saturn was a foreigner, and
therefore much rejoiced in strangers? Or is this better resolved by
history? Anciently (as it seems) the quaestors sent entertainment to
the ambassadors (they called the present _lautia_), they took care
also of the sick, and buried their dead out of their public stock;
but now of late, because of the multitude of ambassadors that come,
that expense is left off; yet it remains still in use to bring the
ambassadors unto the treasurers, that their names may be recorded.

_Question 44._ Why is it not lawful for Jupiter’s priests to swear?

_Solution._ Is it not the reason, that an oath is a kind of test
imposed on a free people, but the body and mind of a priest ought
to be free from imposition? Or is it not unlikely that he will be
disbelieved in smaller matters, who is entrusted with divine and
greater? Or is it that every oath concludes with an execration of
perjury? And an execration is a fearful and a grievous thing. Hence
neither is it thought fit that priests should curse others. Wherefore
the priestess at Athens was commended for refusing to curse Alcibiades,
when the people required her to do it; for she said, I am a praying
not a cursing priestess. Or is it that the danger of perjury is of a
public nature, if a perjured and impious person presides in offering up
prayers and sacrifices on the behalf of the city?

_Question 45._ Why is it that in the solemn feast called Veneralia
they let wine run so freely out of the temple of Venus?

_Solution._ Is this the reason (as some say), that Mezentius the
Etrurian general sent to make a league with Aeneas, upon the condition
that he might have a yearly tribute of wine; Aeneas refusing, Mezentius
engaged to the Etrurians that he would take the wine by force of arms
and give it to them; Aeneas, hearing of his promise, devoted his wine
to the Gods, and after the victory he gathered in the vintage, and
poured it forth before the temple of Venus? Or is this a teaching
ceremony, that we should feast with sobriety and not excess, as if
the Gods were better pleased with the spillers of wine than with the
drinkers of it?

_Question 46._ Wherefore would the ancients have the temple of
Horta to stand always open?

_Solution._ Is this the reason (as Antistius Labeo hath told us),
that _hortari_ signifies _to quicken one to an action_, that
Horta is such a Goddess as exhorts and excites to good things, and that
they suppose therefore that she ought always to be in business, never
procrastinate, therefore not to be shut up or locked? Or is it rather
that Hora, as now they call her (the first syllable pronounced long),
being a kind of an active and busy Goddess, very circumspect and
careful, they were of opinion that she was never lazy nor neglectful
of human affairs? Or is it that this is a Greek name, as many others
of them are, and signifies a Goddess that always oversees and inspects
affairs; and that therefore she has her temple always open, as one that
never slumbers nor sleeps? But if Labeo deduceth _Hora_ aright
from _hortari_, consider whether _orator_ may not rather be
said to be derived from thence,—since the orator, being an exhorting
and exciting person, is a counsellor or leader of the people,—and not
from imprecation and prayer (_orando_), as some say.

_Question 47._ Why did Romulus build the temple of Vulcan without
the city?

_Solution._ What if it were by reason of that fabled grudge which
Vulcan had against Mars for the sake of Venus, that Romulus, being
reputed the son of Mars, would not make Vulcan a cohabitant of the
same house or city with him? Or may this be a silly reason; and was
that temple at first built by Romulus for a senate house and a privy
council, for him to consult on state affairs together with Tatius,
where they might be retired with the senators, and sit in consultation
about matters quietly without interruption from the multitude? Or was
it that Rome was formerly in danger of being burnt from heaven; and he
thought good to adore that God, but to place his habitation without the
city?

_Question 48._ Wherefore did they, in the feasts called Consualia,
put garlands on the horses and asses, and take these beasts off from
all work?

_Solution._ Was it not because they celebrated that feast to
Neptune the cavalier, who was called Consus, and the ass takes part
and share with the horse in his rest from labor? Or was it that, after
navigation came in and traffic by sea, there succeeded a kind of ease
and leisure to the cattle in some kind or other?

_Question 49._ Wherefore was it a custom among the candidates for
magistracy to present themselves in their togas without tunics, as Cato
tells us?

_Solution._ Was it not that they should not carry money in their
bosoms to buy votes with? Or is it that they preferred no man as fit
for the magistracy for the sake of his birth, riches, or honors, but
for his wounds and scars; and that these might be visible to them that
came about them, they came without tunics to the elections? Or, as
by courteous behavior, supplication, and submission, so by humbling
themselves in nakedness did they gain on the affections of the common
people?

_Question 50._ Why did the Flamen Dialis (Jupiter’s priest), when
his wife died, lay down his priestly dignity, as Ateius tells us?

_Solution._ Is it not for this reason, because he that marries
a wife and loses her after marriage is more unfortunate than he that
never took a wife; for the family of a married man is completed, but
the family of him that is married and loseth his wife is not only
incomplete but mutilated? Or is it because his wife joins with the
husband in consecration (as there are many sacred rites that ought
not to be performed unless the wife be present), but to marry another
immediately after he hath lost the former wife is not perhaps easy to
do, and besides is not convenient? Hence it was not lawful formerly to
put away a wife, nor is it at this present lawful; except that Domitian
in our remembrance, being petitioned, granted it. The priests were
present at this dissolution of marriage, doing many terrible, strange,
and uncouth actions. But thou wilt wonder less, if thou art informed by
history that, when one of the censors died, his partner was required
to lay down his place. When Livius Drusus died, Aemilius Scaurus his
colleague would not abandon his government before one of the tribunes
of the people committed him to prison.

_Question 51._ Why is a dog set before the Lares, whom they
properly call Praestites, while the Lares themselves are covered with
dogs’ skins?

_Solution._ Is it that Praestites are they that preside, and it
is fit that presidents should be keepers, and should be frightful to
strangers (as dogs are) but mild and gentle to those of the family? Or
is it rather what some Romans assert, that—as some philosophers who
follow Chrysippus are of the opinion that evil spirits wander up and
down, which the Gods do use as public executioners of unholy and wicked
men—so the Lares are a certain sort of furious and revengeful daemons,
that are observers of men’s lives and families, and are here clothed
with dogs’ skins and have a dog sitting by them, as being sagacious to
hunt upon the foot and to prosecute wicked men?

_Question 52._ Why do they sacrifice a dog to Mana Geneta, and
pray that no home-born should become good?

_Solution._ Is the reason that Geneta is a deity that is employed
about the generation and purgation of corruptible things? For this word
signifies a certain flux (i.e. _Mana_ from _manare_) and
generation, or a flowing generation; for as the Greeks do sacrifice a
dog to Hecate, so do the Romans to Geneta on the behalf of the natives
of the house. Moreover, Socrates saith that the Argives do sacrifice a
dog to Eilioneia (Lucina) to procure a facility of delivery. But what
if the prayer be not made for men, but for dogs puppied at home, that
none of them should be good; for dogs ought to be currish and fierce?
Or is it that they that are deceased are pleasantly called good; and
hence, speaking mystically in their prayer, they signify their desire
that no home-born should die? Neither ought this to seem strange; for
Aristotle says that it is written in the treaty of the Arcadians with
the Lacedaemonians that none of the Tegeates should be “made good” on
account of aid rendered to the party of the Lacedaemonians, i.e. that
none should be slain.

_Question 53._ Why is it that to this very day, while they hold
the games at the Capitol, they set Sardians to sale by a crier, and
a certain old man goes before in way of derision, carrying a child’s
bauble about his neck, which they call bulla?

_Solution._ Was it because a people of the Tuscans called Veientes
maintained a fight a long time with Romulus, and he took this city
last of all, and exposed them and their king to sale by an outcry,
upbraiding him with his madness and folly? And since the Tuscans were
Lydians at first, and Sardis was the metropolis of the Lydians, so they
set the Veientes to sale under the name of Sardians, and to this day
they keep up the custom in a way of pastime.

_Question 54._ Why do they call the flesh-market Macellum?

_Solution._ Was it not by corrupting the word μάγειρος, _a
cook_, as with many other words, that the custom hath prevailed?
For _c_ and _g_ are nigh akin to one another, and _g_
came more lately into use, being inserted among the other letters by
Sp. Carbilius; and now by lispers and stammerers _l_ is pronounced
instead of _r_. Or this matter may be made clear by a story. It
is reported, that at Rome there was a stout man, a robber, who had
robbed many, and being taken with much difficulty, was brought to
condign punishment: his name was Macellus, out of whose riches a public
meat-market was built, which bare his name.

_Question 55._ Why are the minstrels allowed to go about the city
on the Ides of January, wearing women’s apparel?

_Solution._ Is it for the reason here rehearsed? This sort of men
(as it seems) had great privileges accruing to them from the grant of
King Numa, by reason of his godly devotion; which things afterward
being taken from them when the Decemviri managed the government, they
forsook the city. Whereupon there was a search made for them, and one
of the priests, offering sacrifice without music, made a superstitious
scruple of so doing. And when they returned not upon invitation, but
led their lives in Tibur, a certain freedman told the magistrates
privately that he would undertake to bring them. And providing a
plentiful feast, as if he had sacrificed to the Gods, he invited the
minstrels; women-kind was present also, with whom they revelled all
night, sporting and dancing. There on a sudden the man began a speech,
and being surprised with a fright, as if his patron had come in upon
him, persuaded the pipers to ascend the caravans that were covered all
over with skins, saying he would carry them back to Tibur. But this
whole business was but a trepan; for he wheeling about the caravan,
and they perceiving nothing by reason of wine and darkness, he very
cunningly brought them all into Rome by the morning. Most of them, by
reason of the night-revel and the drink that they were in, happened to
be clothed in flowered women’s robes; whereupon, being prevailed upon
by the magistrates and reconciled, it was decreed that they should go
up and down the city on that day, habited after this manner.

_Question 56._ Why are they of opinion that matrons first built
the temple of Carmenta, and at this day do they worship her most?

_Solution._ There is a certain tradition that, when the women
were prohibited by the senate from the use of chariots drawn by a
pair of horses, they conspired together not to be got with child and
breed children, and in this manner to be revenged on their husbands
until they revoked the decree and gratified them; which being done,
children were begot, and the women, becoming good breeders and very
fruitful, built the temple of Carmenta. Some say that Carmenta was
Evander’s mother, and going into Italy was called Themis, but as some
say, Nicostrata; who, when she sang forth oracles in verse, was called
Carmenta by the Latins; for they call verses _carmina_. There are
some of opinion that Carmenta was a Destiny, therefore the matrons
sacrifice to her. But the etymology of the word is from _carens
mente_ (_beside herself_), by reason of divine raptures. Hence
Carmenta had not her name from carmina; but contrariwise, her verses
were called carmina from her, because being inspired she sang her
oracles in verse.

_Question 57._ What is the reason that, when the women do
sacrifice to Rumina, they pour forth milk plentifully on the
sacrifices, but offer no wine?

_Solution._ Is it because the Latins call a breast _ruma_,
and that tree (as they say) is called _ruminalis_ under which the
she-wolf drew forth her breast to Romulus? And as we call those women
that bring up children with milk from the breast breast-women, so did
Rumina—who was a wet nurse, a dry nurse, and a rearer of children—not
permit wine, as being hurtful to the infants.

_Question 58._ Why do they call some senators Patres Conscripti,
and others only Patres?

_Solution._ Is not this the reason, that those that were first
constituted by Romulus they called Patres and Patricians, as being
gentlemen who could show their pedigree; but those that were elected
afterwards from among the commonalty they called Patres Conscripti?

_Question 59._ Why was one altar common to Hercules and the Muses?

_Solution._ Was it because Hercules taught letters first to
Evander’s people, as Juba tells us? And it was esteemed an honorable
action of those that taught their friends and relations; for it was
but of late that they began to teach for hire. The first that opened a
grammar school was Spurius Carbilius, a freeman of Carbilius, the first
that divorced his wife.

_Question 60._ What is the reason that, of Hercules’s two altars,
the women do not partake or taste of the things offered on the greater?

_Solution._ Is it not because Carmenta’s women came too late for
the sacrifices? The same thing happened also to the Pinarii; whence
they were excluded from the sacrificial feast, and fasting while others
were feasting, they were called Pinarii (from πεινάω). Or is it upon
the account of that fabulous story of the coat and Dejaneira?

_Question 61._ What is the reason that it’s forbidden to
mention, enquire after, or name the chief tutelary and guardian God
of Rome, whether male or female?—which prohibition they confirm with
a superstitious tradition, reporting that Valerius Soranus perished
miserably for uttering that name.

_Solution._ Is this the reason (as some Roman histories tell us),
that there are certain kinds of evocations and enchantments, with which
they are wont to entice away the Gods of their enemies, and to cause
theirs to come and dwell with them; and they feared lest this mischief
should befall them from others? As the Tyrians are said to bind fast
their images with cords, but others, when they will send any of them
to washing or purifying, require sureties for their return; so did the
Romans reckon they had their God in most safe and secure custody, he
being unexpressible and unknown? Or, as Homer hath versified,

The earth all Gods in common have?[160]

that men might worship and reverence all Gods that have the earth in
common, so did the ancient Romans obscure the Lord of their Salvation,
requiring that not only this but all Gods should be reverenced by the
citizens?

_Question 62._ Why among them that were called Feciales (in
Greek, peace-makers) was he that was named Pater Patratus accounted
the chiefest? But this must be one who hath his father living, and
children of his own; and he hath even at this time a certain privilege
and trust, for the Praetors commit to those men’s trust the persons
of those who, by reason of comeliness and beauty, stand in need of an
exact and chaste guardianship.

_Solution._ Is this the reason, that they must be such whose
children reverence them, and who reverence their parents? Or doth the
name itself suggest a reason? For _patratum_ will have a thing to
be complete and finished; for he whose lot it is to be a father whilst
his father liveth is (as it were) perfecter than others. Or is it that
he ought to be overseer of oaths and peace, and (according to Homer) to
see before and behind? He is such a one especially, who hath a son for
whom he consults, and a father with whom he consults.

_Question 63._ Why is he that is called Rex Sacrorum (who is king
of priests) forbid either to take upon him a civil office or to make an
oration to the people?

_Solution._ Was it that of old the kings did perform the most and
greatest sacred rites and offered sacrifices together with the priests;
but when they kept not within the bounds of moderation and became proud
and insolent, most of the Grecians, depriving them of their authority,
left to them only this part of their office, to sacrifice to the Gods;
but the Romans, casting out kings altogether, gave the charge of the
sacrifice to another, enjoining him neither to meddle with public
affairs nor to hold office, so that they might seem to be subject to
royalty only in their sacrifices, and to endure the name of king only
with respect to the Gods? Hence there is a certain sacrifice kept by
tradition in the market-place near the Comitia, which as soon as the
king (i.e. the chief priest) hath offered, he immediately withdraws
himself by flight out of the market-place.

_Question 64._ Why do they not suffer the table to be quite voided
when it’s taken away, but will have something always to remain upon it?

_Solution._ What if it be that they would intimate that something
of our present enjoyments should be left for the future, and that
to-day we should be mindful of to-morrow? Or that they reckon it a
piece of manners to repress and restrain the appetite in our present
fruitions? For they less desire absent things, who are accustomed to
abstain from those that are present. Or was it a custom of courtesy
towards household servants? For they do not love so much to take as to
partake, deeming that they hold a kind of communion with their masters
at the table. Or is it that no sacred thing ought to be suffered to be
empty? And the table is a sacred thing.

_Question 65._ Why doth not a man lie at first with a bride in the
light, but when it is dark?

_Solution._ Is it not for modesty’s sake, for at the first
congress he looks upon her as a stranger to him? Or is it that he may
be inured to go into his own wife with modesty? Or, as Solon hath
written, “Let the bride go into the bed-chamber gnawing a quince,
that the first salutation be not harsh and ungrateful.” So did the
Roman lawgiver command that, if there should be any thing absurd and
unpleasant in her body, she should hide it? Or was it intended to cast
infamy upon the unlawful use of venery by causing that the lawful
should have certain signs of modesty attending it?

_Question 66._ Why was one of the horse-race rounds called
Flaminia?

_Solution._ Is it because, when Flaminius, one of the ancients,
bestowed a field on the city, they employed its revenue on the
horse-races, and with the overplus money built the way which they call
Flaminia?

_Question 67._ Why do they call the rod-bearers lictors?

_Solution._ Is this the reason, because these men were wont to
bind desperate bullies, and they followed Romulus carrying thongs in
their bosoms? The vulgar Romans say _alligare_, _to bind_,
when the more refined in speech say _ligare_. Or is now _c_
inserted, when formerly they called them _litores_, being
_liturgi_, ministers for public service; for λῇτον until this day
is writ for _public_ in many of the Grecian laws, which scarce any
is ignorant of.

_Question 68._ Why do the Luperci sacrifice a dog? The Luperci
are they that run up and down naked (saving only their girdles) in the
Lupercal plays, and slash all that they meet with a whip.

_Solution._ Is it not because these feats are done for the
purification of the city? For they call the month February, and indeed
the very day Februatus, and the habit of whipping with thongs they call
_februare_, the word signifying _to cleanse_. And to speak
the truth, all the Grecians have used, and some do use to this very
day, a slain dog for an expiatory sacrifice; and among other sacrifices
of purification, they offer whelps to Hecate, and sprinkle those that
need cleansing with the puppy’s blood, calling this kind of purifying
puppification. Or is it that _lupus_ is λύκος, _a wolf_, and
Lupercalia are Lycaea; but a dog is at enmity with a wolf, therefore is
sacrificed on the Lycaean festivals? Or is it because the dogs do bark
at and perplex the Luperci as they scout about the city? Or is it that
this sacrifice is offered to Pan, and Pan loves dogs because of his
herds of goats.

_Question 69._ Why, upon the festival called Septimontium,
did they observe to abstain from the use of chariots drawn by a
pair of horses; and even until now, do they that regard antiquity
still abstain? They do observe the Septimontium feast in honor of
the addition of the seventh hill to the city, upon which it became
Septicollis, seven-hilled Rome.

_Solution._ What if it be (as some of the Romans conjecture)
because the parts of the city are not as yet everywhere connected? Or
if this conceit be nothing to the purpose, what if it be that, when the
great work of building the city was finished and they determined to
cease the increasing of the city any further, they rested themselves
and rested the cattle that bore a share in the labor with them, and
provided accordingly that they might participate of the holiday by rest
from labor? Or was it that they would have all the citizens always
present for the solemnity and return of a festival, especially that
which was observed in remembrance of the compact uniting the parts of
the city; and that none should desert the city for whose sake the feast
is kept, they were not allowed to use their yoke chariots that day?

_Question 70._ Why do they call those Furciferi which are convict
of thefts or any other of those slavish crimes?

_Solution._ Was it this (which was an argument of the severity of
the ancients), that whenever any convicted his servant of any villany,
he enjoined him to carry the forked piece of timber that is under the
cart (the tongue of the cart), and to go with it through the next
villages and neighborhood, to be seen of all, that they might distrust
him and be aware of him for the future? This piece of wood we call a
prop, the Romans call it _furca_, _a fork_; hence he that
carries it about is called _furcifer_, _a fork-bearer_.

_Question 71._ Why do they bind hay about the horns of oxen that
are wont to push, that they may be shunned by him that meets them?

_Solution._ It is that by reason of gormandizing and stuffing
their guts oxen, asses, horses, and men become mischievous, as
Sophocles somewhere saith.

Like full-fed colt thou kickest up heels,
From stuffed paunch, cheeks, and full meals?

Therefore the Romans say that M. Crassus had hay about his horns, for
they that were turbulent men in the commonwealth were wont to stand
in awe of him as a revengeful man and one scarce to be meddled with;
although afterwards it was said again, that Caesar had taken away
Crassus’s hay, being the first man of the republic that withstood and
affronted him.

_Question 72._ Why would they have the lanthorns of the
soothsaying priests (which formerly they called Auspices, and now
Augures) to be always open at top, and no cover to be put upon them?

_Solution._ Is it as the Pythagoreans do, who make little things
symbols of great matters,—as forbidding to sit down upon a bushel
and to stir up the fire with a sword,—so that the ancients used many
enigmatical ceremonies, especially about their priests, and such was
this of the lanthorn? For the lanthorn is like the body encompassing
the soul, the soul being the light withinside, and the understanding
and judgment ought to be always open and quick-sighted, and never to be
shut up or blown out. And when the winds blow, the birds are unsettled
and do not afford sound prognostics, by reason of their wandering and
irregularity in flying; by this usage therefore they teach that their
soothsayers must not prognosticate when there are high winds, but in
still and calm weather, when they can use their open lanthorns.

_Question 73._ Why were priests that had sores about them forbid
to use divination.

_Solution._ Is not this a significant sign that, whilst they are
employed about divine matters, they ought not to be in any pain, nor
have any sore or passion in their minds, but to be cheerful, sincere,
and without distraction? Or it is but rational, if no man may offer a
victim that hath a sore, nor use such birds for soothsaying, that much
more they should themselves be free from these blemishes, and be clean,
sincere, and sound, when they go about to inspect divine prodigies;
for an ulcer seems to be a mutilation and defilement of the body.

_Question 74._ Why did Servius Tullius build a temple of Small
Fortune, whom they call Brevis?

_Solution._ Was it because he was of a mean original and in a
low condition, being born of a captive woman, and by fortune came to
be king of Rome? Or did not that change of his condition manifest the
greatness rather than the smallness of his fortune? But Servius most
of all of them seems to ascribe divine influence to Fortune, giving
thereby a reputation to all his enterprises. For he did not only
build temples of Hopeful Fortune, of Fortune that averteth evil, of
Mild, Primogenial, and Masculine Fortune; but there is a temple also
of Private Fortune, another of Regardful Fortune, another of Hopeful
Fortune, and the fourth of Virgin Fortune. But why should any one
mention any more names, seeing there is a temple also of Ensnaring
Fortune, which they name Viscata, as it were ensnaring us when we are
as yet afar off, and enforcing us upon business.[161] Consider this
now, whether it be that Servius found that great matters are effected
by a small piece of Fortune, and that it often falls out that great
things are effected by some or do come to nought by a small thing
being done or not done. He built therefore a temple of Small Fortune,
teaching us to take care of our business, and not contemn things that
happen by reason of their smallness.

_Question 75._ Why did they not extinguish a candle, but suffer it
to burn out of its own accord.

_Solution._ Is this the reason, that they adored it as being
related and akin to unquenchable and eternal fire? Or is it a
significant ceremony, teaching us that we are not to kill and destroy
any animated creature that is harmless, fire being as it were an
animal? For it both needs nourishment and moves itself, and when it is
extinguished it makes a noise as if it were then slain? Or doth this
usage instruct us that we ought not to make waste of fire or water,
or any other necessary thing that we have a super-abundance of, but
suffer those that have need to use them, leaving them to others when we
ourselves have no further use for them?

_Question 76._ Why do they that would be preferred before others
in gentility wear little moons on their shoes?

_Solution._ Is this the reason (as Castor saith), that this is
a symbol of the place of habitation that is said to be in the moon,
signifying that after death souls should have the moon under their
feet again? Or was this a fashion of renown among families of greatest
antiquity, as were the Arcadians of Evander’s posterity, that were
called men born before the moon (προσέληνοι)? Or is this, like many
other customs, to put men who are lofty and high-minded in mind of the
mutability of human affairs to either side, setting the moon before
them as an example,

When first she comes from dark to light,
Trimming, her face becomes fair bright,
Increasing, till she’s full in sight;
Declining then, leaves nought but night?[162]

Or was this for a doctrine of obedience to authority,—that they would
have us not discontented under it; but, as the moon doth willingly obey
her superior and conform unto him, always vamping after the rays of the
sun (as Parmenides hath it), so they that are subjects to any prince
should be contented with their lower station, in the enjoyment of power
and dignity derived from him?

_Question 77._ Why are they of an opinion that the year is
Jupiter’s, but the months Juno’s?

_Solution._ Is it because Jupiter and Juno reign over the
invisible Gods, who are no otherwise seen but by the eyes of our
understanding, but the Sun and Moon over the visible? And the Sun
verily causeth the year, and the Moon the months. Neither ought we to
think that they are bare images of them, but the Sun is Jupiter himself
materially, and the Moon Juno herself materially. Therefore they name
her Juno (_a juvenescendo_, the name signifying a thing that is
new or grows young) from the nature of the Moon; and they call her
Lucina (as it were _bright_ or _shining_), and they are of
opinion that she helps women in their travail-pains. Whence is that of
the poets:

By azure heaven beset with stars,
By th’ moon that hastens births;

for they suppose that women have the easiest travail at the full of the
moon.

_Question 78._ What is the reason that a bird called
_sinister_ in soothsaying is fortunate?

_Solution._ What if this be not true, but the dialect deludes
so many? For they render ἀριστερόν _sinistrum_; but to permit a
thing is _sinere_, and they say _sine_ when they desire a
thing to be permitted; therefore a prognostic permitting an action
(being _sinisterium_) the vulgar do understand and call amiss
_sinistrum_. Or is it as Dionysius saith, that when Ascanius,
the son of Aeneas, had pitched battle against Mezentius, a flash of
lightning portending victory (as they prognosticated) came on his
left hand, and for the future they observed it so; or, as some others
say, that this happened to Aeneas? Moreover, the Thebans routing and
conquering their enemies by the left wing of the army at Leuctra, they
continued in all battles to give the left wing the pre-eminence. Or is
it rather as Juba thinks, that to those that look toward the east the
north is on the left hand, which verily some make the right hand and
superior part of the world? Consider whether the soothsayers do not,
as it were, corroborate left-hand things, as the weaker by nature,
and do intimate as if they introduced a supply of that defect of power
that is in them. Or is it that they think that things terrestrial and
mortal stand directly over against heavenly and divine things, and do
conjecture that the things which to us are on the left hand the Gods
send down from their right hand?

_Question 79._ Why was it lawful to bring the bones of one that
had triumphed (after he was dead and burnt) into the city and lay them
there, as Pyrrho the Liparaean hath told us?

_Solution._ Was it for the honor they had for the deceased? For
they granted that not only generals and other eminent persons, but also
their offspring, should be buried in the market-place, for example,
Valerius and Fabricius. And they say, when the posterity of these
persons died, they were brought into the market-place, and a burning
firebrand was put under them and immediately taken away; and thus all
that might have caused envy was avoided, and the right to the honor was
fully confirmed.

_Question 80._ Why did they that publicly feasted the triumphers
humbly request the consuls, and by messengers sent beseech them, not to
come to their supper?

_Solution._ Was it that it was necessary to give the supreme place
and most honorable entertainment to the triumpher, and wait upon him
home after supper; whereas, the consuls being present, they might do
such things to none other but them?

_Question 81._ Why did not the tribune of the people wear a purple
garment, whenas each of the other magistrates wore one?

_Solution._ What if the tribune is not a magistrate at all? For he
neither hath lictors, nor sitting in tribunal doth he determine causes;
neither do the tribunes, as the rest, enter upon their office at the
beginning of the year, nor do they cease when a dictator is chosen;
but as if they translated all magistratic power to themselves, they
continue still, being (as it were) no magistrates, but holding another
kind of rank. And as some rhetoricians will not have a prohibition to
be judicial proceeding, seeing it doth something contrary to judicial
proceeding,—for the one brings in an action at law and gives judgment
upon it, but the other nonsuits it and dismisseth the cause,—after
the like manner they are of opinion that tribuneship is rather a curb
to magistracy, and that it is an order standing in opposition to
government rather than a piece of government itself; for the tribune’s
office and authority is to withstand the magistrate’s authority, even
to curtail his extravagant power. Perhaps these and similar reasons
may be mere ingenious devices; but in truth, since tribuneship takes
its original from the people, popularity is its stronghold, and it is
a great thing not to carry it above the rest of the people, but to be
like the citizens they have to do with in gesture, habit, and diet.
State indeed becomes a consul and a praetor; but as for a tribune (as
Caius Curio saith), he must be one that even is trampled upon, not
grave in countenance, nor difficult of access, nor harsh to the rabble,
but more tractable to them than to others. Hence it was decreed that
the tribune’s doors should not be shut, but be open night and day
as a haven and place of refuge for distressed people. And the more
condescending his outward deportment is, by so much the more doth he
increase in his power; for they dignify him as one of public use, and
to be resorted to of all sorts even as an altar; therefore by the
reverence they give him, he is sacred, holy, and inviolable; and when
he makes a public progress, it is a law that every one should cleanse
and purify the body as defiled.

_Question 82._ Why before the chief officers are rods carried
bound together, with the axes fastened to them?

_Solution._ What if it be a significant ceremony, to show that a
magistrate’s anger ought not to be rash and ungrounded? Or is it that,
while the rods are leisurely unloosing, they make deliberation and
delay in their anger, so that oftentimes they change their sentence as
to the punishment? Now, whereas some sort of crimes are curable, some
incurable, rods correct the corrigible, but the axes are to cut off the
incorrigible.

_Question 83._ What is the reason that the Romans, when they were
informed that the barbarians called Bletonesians had sacrificed a man
to the Gods, sent for their magistrates to punish them; but when they
made it appear that they did it in obedience to a certain law, they
dismissed them, but prohibited the like action for the future; whenas
they themselves, not many years preceding, buried two men and two women
alive in the Forum Boarium, two of whom were Greeks and two Gauls?
For it seems absurd to do this themselves, and yet to reprimand the
barbarians as if they were committing profaneness.

_Solution._ What if this be the reason, that they reckoned it
profane to sacrifice a man to the Gods, but necessary to do so to the
Daemons? Or were they of opinion that they sinned that did such things
by custom or law; but as for themselves, they did it being enjoined
to it by the Sibylline books? For it is reported that one Elvia, a
virgin, riding on horseback was struck with lightning and cast from
her horse, and the horse was found lying uncovered and she naked, as
if on set purpose; her clothes had been turned up from her secret
parts, also her shoes, rings, and head-gear all lay scattered up and
down, here and there; her tongue also was hanging out of her mouth.
And when the diviners declared that it was an intolerable disgrace to
the holy virgins that it should be published, and that some part of
the abuse did touch the cavaliers, a servant of a certain barbarian
cavalier informed, that three vestal virgins, Aemilia, Licinia, and
Martia, about the same time had been deflowered, and for a long time
played the whores with some men, among whom was Butetius, the said
informer’s master. The virgins being convict were punished; and the
fact appearing heinous, it was thought meet that the priest should
consult the Sibylline books, where there were oracles found foretelling
these things would come to pass for mischief to the republic, and
enjoining them—in order to avert the impending calamity—to provide two
Grecians and two Gauls, and bury them alive in that place, in order to
the appeasing some alien and foreign Daemons.

_Question 84._ Why do they take the beginning of the day from the
midnight?

_Solution._ Is the reason that the commonweal had a military
constitution at the first? For many matters of concern on military
expeditions are managed by night. Or did they make sunrising the
beginning of business, and the night the preparation for it? For men
ought to come prepared to action, and not to be in preparation when
they should be doing,—as Myso is reported to have said to Chilo the
Wise, when he was making a fan in winter. Or as the noontide to many is
the time for finishing public and weighty affairs, so did it seem meet
to make midnight the beginning? This hath this confirmation, that a
Roman governor would make no league or confederation in the afternoon.
Or is it impossible to take the beginning and end of the day from
sunrising to sunsetting? For, as the vulgar measure the beginning of
the day by sense to be the first appearance of the sun, and take the
first beginning of the night to be the complete withdrawment of the sun
from sight, we shall thus have no equinoctial day; but the night which
we suppose comes nearest in equality to the day will be manifestly
shorter than the day by the diameter of the sun. Which absurdity the
mathematicians, going about to solve, have determined that, where the
centre of the sun toucheth the horizon, there is the true parting
point between day and night. But this contradicts sense; for it must
follow that whilst there is much light above the earth, yea, the sun
illuminating us, we will not for all this confess it to be day, but
must say that it is still night. Whereas then it is hard to take the
beginning of the day from the rising and setting of the sun, by reason
of the forementioned absurdities, it remains to take the zenith and the
nadir for the beginning. The last is best, for the sun’s course from
noon is by way of declination from us; but from midnight he takes his
course towards us, as sunrising comes on.

_Question 85._ Wherefore did they not in ancient times suffer
women to grind or play the cook?

_Solution._ Haply, because they remembered the covenant that
they made with the Sabines; for after they had robbed them of their
daughters, and fighting many battles became reconciled, among other
articles of agreement this was recorded, that a wife was not to grind
nor play the cook for a Roman husband.

_Question 86._ Why do they not marry wives in the month of May?

_Solution._ Is this the reason, that because May is between April
and June,—concerning which months they have an opinion that that is
sacred to Venus, this to Juno, both of them being nuptial Gods,—they
either take an opportunity a little before May, or tarry till it be
over? Or is it that in this month they offer the greatest expiatory
sacrifice, now casting the images of men from a bridge into the river,
and formerly men themselves? Moreover, it is by law required that the
Flaminica, the reputed priestess of Juno, should be most sourly sullen
during the time, and neither wash nor trim up herself. Or is it because
many of the Latins in this month offer oblations unto the dead? And
therefore perhaps they worship Mercury in this month, which from Maia
derives its name? Or, as some say, is May derived from elder age
(maior) and Juno from younger (iunior)? For youth is more suitable to
matrimony, as Euripides hath said,

Old age the Cyprian queen must ever shun,
And Venus from old men in scorn doth run.

Therefore they marry not in May, but tarry till June, which is
presently after May.

_Question 87._ Why do they part the hair of women when they are
married with the point of a spear?

_Solution._ What if it be a significant ceremony, showing that
they took their first wives in marriage by force of arms and war?
Or is it that they may instruct them that they are to dwell with
husbands that are soldiers and warriors, and that they should put on
such ornamental attire as is not luxurious or lascivious, but plain?
So Lycurgus commanded that all the gates and tops of houses should be
built with saw and hatchet, and no other sort of workmen’s instrument
should be used about them; yea, he rejected all gayety and superfluity.
Or doth this action parabolically intimate divorce, as that marriage
can be dissolved only by the sword? Or is it that most of these nuptial
ceremonies relate to Juno? For a spear is decreed sacred to Juno, and
most of her statues are supported by a spear, and she is surnamed
Quiritis, and a spear of old was called _quiris_, wherefore they
surname Mars Quirinus?

_Question 88._ Why do they call the money that is laid out upon
the public plays _lucar_?

_Solution._ Is it because there are many groves consecrated to the
Gods about the city, which they call _luci_, and the revenue of
these they expend upon the said plays?

_Question 89._ Why do they call the Quirinalia the Feast of Fools?

_Solution._ Was it because they set apart that day for those that
were unacquainted with their own curiae, as Juba saith? Or was it for
them that did not sacrifice with their tribes, as the rest did, in the
Fornicalia, by reason of business or long journeys or ignorance, so
that it was allowed to them to solemnize that feast upon this day?

_Question 90._ What is the reason that, when there is a sacrifice
to Hercules, they mention no other God and no dog appears within the
enclosure, as Varro saith?

_Solution._ Is the reason of their naming no other God, because
they are of opinion that Hercules was but a half God? And, as some say,
Evander built an altar to him and brought him a sacrifice, whilst he
was yet here among men. And of all creatures he had most enmity to a
dog, for this creature always held him hard to it, as did Cerberus; and
that which most of all prejudiced him was that, when Oeonus, the son
of Licymnius, was slain for a dog’s sake by the Hippocoontidae, he was
necessitated to take up the cudgels, and lost many of his friends and
his brother Iphicles.

_Question 91._ Why was it unlawful for the patricians to dwell
about the Capitol?

_Solution._ Was it because M. Manlius, whilst he dwelt there,
affected arbitrary government; upon whose account the family came under
an oath of abjuration that no Manlius should for the future bear the
name of Marcus? Or was this an ancient suspicion? For the potent men
would never leave calumniating Publicola, a most popular man, nor would
the common people leave fearing him till he had plucked down his house,
which seemed to hang over the market-place.

_Question 92._ Why do they put on a garland of oaken leaves on him
that saves a citizen in battle?

_Solution._ Is it because it is easy to find an oak everywhere
in the military expeditions? Or is it because a crown is sacred to
Jupiter and Juno, who in their opinion are the city guardians? Or was
it an ancient custom among the Arcadians, who are something akin to the
oak? For they repute themselves the first men produced of the earth, as
the oak among the vegetables.

_Question 93._ Why do they for the most part use vultures for
soothsaying?

_Solution._ Was this the reason, because twelve vultures appeared
to Romulus upon the building of Rome? Or because of all birds this is
least frequent and familiar? For it is not easy to meet with young
vultures, but they fly to us unexpectedly from some remote parts;
therefore the sight of them is portentous. Or haply they learned this
from Hercules, if Herodotus speak true that Hercules rejoiced most in
the beginning of an enterprise at the sight of a vulture, being of
opinion that a vulture was the justest of all birds of prey. For first,
he meddles not with any living creature, neither doth he destroy any
thing that hath breath in it, as eagles, hawks, and other fowls do that
prey by night, but lives only upon dead carcasses; and next, he passeth
by all those of his kind, for none ever saw a vulture feeding on a
bird, as eagles and hawks do, which for the most part pursue birds like
themselves, and slay them, even as Aeschylus hath it,

A bird that preys on birds, how can’t be clean?

And verily this bird is not pernicious to men, for it neither destroys
fruits nor plants, nor is hurtful to any tame animal. Moreover if it
be (as the Egyptians fabulously pretend) that the whole kind of them
is of the female sex, and that they conceive by the reception of the
east wind into their bodies, as the trees do by receiving the west
wind, it is most probable that very certain and sound prognostics may
be made from them; whereas in other birds (there being so many rapines,
flights, and pursuits about copulation) there are great disturbances
and uncertainties attending them.

_Question 94._ For what reason is the temple of Aesculapius placed
without the city?

_Solution._ Was it because they reckoned it a wholesomer kind of
living without the city than within? For the Greeks have placed the
edifices belonging to Aesculapius for the most part on high places,
where the air is pure and clear. Or is it that they suppose this God
was fetched from Epidaurus? For the temple of Aesculapius is not close
by that city, but at a great distance from it. Or is it that, by a
serpent that went on shore out of a trireme galley into the island and
disappeared, they think the God himself intimated to them the place of
building his temple?

_Question 95._ Why was it ordained that they that were to live
chaste should abstain from pulse?

_Solution._ Did they, like the Pythagoreans, abominate beans for
the causes which are alleged, and the lathyrus and erebinthus as being
named from Lethe and Erebus? Or was it because they used pulse for
the most part in their funeral feasts and invocations of the dead? Or
rather was it because they should bring empty and slender bodies to
their purifications and expiations? For pulse are windy, and cause a
great deal of excrements that require purging off. Or is it because
they irritate lechery, by reason of their flatulent and windy nature?

_Question 96._ Why do they inflict no other punishment on Vestal
Virgins, when they are defiled, than burying them alive?

_Solution._ Is this the reason, because they burn the dead, and to
bury her by fire who hath not preserved sacred the divine fire would be
unjust? Or was it that they judged it a wicked act to cut off a person
sanctified by the greatest ceremonial purification, and to lay hands on
a holy woman; and therefore they contrived a machine for her to die in
of herself, and let her down into a vault made under ground, where was
placed a candle burning, also some bread and milk and water, and then
the den was covered with earth on top? Neither by this execrable manner
of devoting them are they exempt from superstition; but to this day the
priests going to the place perform purgatory rites.

_Question 97._ What is the reason that, at the horse-race on the
Ides of December, the lucky horse that beats is sacrificed as sacred
to Mars; and a certain man, cutting off his tail, brings it to a place
called Regia, and besmears the altar with the blood of it; but for the
head, one party coming down from the way called Sacred, and others from
the Suburra, do fight?

_Solution._ Whether was it (as some say) that, reckoning that Troy
was taken by a horse, they punish a horse, as being the

Renowned Trojan race commixt with Latin boys?

Or is it because a horse is a fierce, warlike, and martial beast,
therefore they do sacrifice to the Gods the things that are most
acceptable and suitable; and he that conquers is offered, because
victory and prowess doth belong to that God? Or is it rather because to
stand in battle is the work of God, and they that keep their ranks and
files do conquer those that do not keep them but fly, and swiftness of
foot is punished as the maintenance of cowardice; so that hereby it is
significantly taught that there is no safety to them that run away?

_Question 98._ What is the reason that the censors entering upon
their office do nothing before they have contracted for providing meat
for the sacred geese, and for polishing the statue?

_Solution._ Is this the reason, that they begin with those
things that savor of most frugality, and such things as want not much
charge and trouble? Or is it in grateful commemoration of what these
creatures did of old, when the Gauls invaded Rome and the barbarians
scaled the walls of the Capitol by night? For the geese were sensible
of it when the dogs were asleep, and they with their gaggling awaked
the watch? Or, seeing the censors are the conservers of such things as
are of greatest and most necessary concern,—to oversee and narrowly
inspect the public sacrifices, and the lives, manners, and diet of
men,—do they presently set before their consideration the most vigilant
creature, and by the watchfulness of these instruct the citizens not to
disregard or neglect sacred things? As for the polishing of the statue,
it is necessary, for the minium (wherewith they of old colored the
statues) soon fades.

_Question 99._ What is the reason that of the other priests they
depose any one that is condemned or banished, and substitute another in
his room; but remove not the augur from his priesthood so long as he
lives, though he be convicted of the greatest crimes? They call them
augurs who are employed in soothsaying.

_Solution._ Is the reason (as some say) that they will have none
to know the mysteries of the priests who is not a priest? Or that the
augur is bound by oath to discover to none the management of sacred
things; therefore they refuse to absolve him from his oath, when he is
reduced to a private capacity? Or is it that the name of augur is not a
title of honor and dignity, but of skill and art? It would therefore be
the like case to depose a musician from being a musician or a physician
from being a physician, with that of prohibiting a diviner from being a
diviner; seeing they cannot take away his faculty, though they deprive
him of the title. Moreover they do not substitute augurs, because they
will keep to the number of augurs that were at the beginning.

_Question 100._ What is the reason that in the Ides of August
(which at first they called Sextilis) all the men-servants and
maid-servants do feast, but the free women make it most of their
business to wash and purge their heads?

_Solution._ Was it that King Servius about this day was born of
a captive maid-servant, and hence the servants have a vacation time
from work; and that rinsing the head was a thing that took its original
from a custom of the maid-servants upon the account of the feast, and
finally passed also into the free women?

_Question 101._ Why do they finify their boys with necklaces,
which they call _bullae_?

_Solution._ What if this were for the honor of the wives which
were taken by force? For as many other things, so this might be one
of the injunctions laid on their posterity. Or did they it in honor
of Tarquin’s manhood? For it is reported of him that, whilst he was
but a boy, being engaged in a battle against the Latins and Tuscans,
charging his enemies, he fell from his horse; yet animating those
Romans which were engaged in the charge, he led them on courageously.
The enemies were put to a remarkable rout, and sixteen thousand were
slain; whereupon he had this badge of honor bestowed upon him by
his father the king. Or was it that by the ancients it was neither
lewd nor dishonorable to love beautiful slaves (as now the comedies
testify), but that they resolvedly abstained from free-born servants;
and lest, by coming accidentally on naked boys, they should ignorantly
transgress, the free boys wore this mark of distinction? Or was this
a protector of good order, and after a manner a curb of incontinency;
they being ashamed to pretend to manhood before they have put off
the badge of children? That which they say who follow Varro is not
probable, that _boule_ by the Aeolians is called _bolla_,
and this is put about children as a teaching sign of good counsel. But
consider whether they do not wear it for the moon’s sake. For the
visible face of the moon, when it is halved, is not spherical, but
shaped like a lentil or a quoit; and (as Empedocles supposeth) so is
also the side that is turned away from us.

_Question 102._ Why do they name boys when they are nine days old,
and girls when they are eight?

_Solution._ Perhaps it’s a natural reason, that girls are
forwarder, for the female grows up and comes to full stature and
perfection before the male. But they take the day after the seventh,
because the seventh is dangerous to infants by reason of the
navel-string; for with many it falls off at seven days, and until it
falls off, an infant is more like a plant than an animal. Or is it,
as the Pythagoreans reckon, that the even number is the feminine,
and the odd number the masculine? For it is a fruitful number, and
excels the even in respect of its composition. And if these numbers be
divided into units, the even, like a female, hath an empty space in
the middle; the odd number always leaves a segment full in the middle,
wherefore this is fit to be compared to the male, that to the female.
Or is it thus, that of all numbers nine is the first square number made
of three, which is an odd and perfect number, but eight is the first
cube made of two, an even number; whence a male ought to be square,
superexcelling, and complete; but a woman, like a cube, constant, a
good housewife, and no gadding gossip? This also may be added that,
as eight is a cube from the root two, and nine a square from the root
three, so the female makes use of two names, and the males of three.

_Question 103._ Why do they call those whose fathers are not known
_Spurius_?

_Solution._ It is not verily—as the Grecians suppose and as the
rhetoricians say in their determinations—because they are begot of some
promiscuous and common seed (as the Greeks say σπόρος). But Spurius is
found among first names, as Sextus, Decimus, Caius. But the Romans do
not write all the letters of the first name; but either one letter, as
T. for Titus, L. for Lucius, M. for Marcus; or two letters, as Ti. for
Tiberius, Cn. for Cnaeus; or three, as Sex. for Sextus, and Ser. for
Servius. Now Spurius is of those that are written with two letters,
Sp. But with these same letters they write _without father_, S.
for _sine_, and P. for _patre_, which truly hath caused the
mistake. Moreover, we may meet with another reason, but it is more
absurd. They say, that the Sabines called the privities of a woman
_spurius_; and therefore they call him so, by way of reproach, who
is born of a woman unmarried and unespoused.

_Question 104._ Why did they call Bacchus Liber Pater?

_Solution._ Was the reason because they make him, as it were,
the father of liberty to tipplers? For most men become very audacious
and are filled with too much licentious prattle, by reason of too
much drink. Or is this it, that he hath supplied them with a libamen,
a drink-offering? Or is it, as Alexander hath said, that Bacchus is
called Eleutherius from his having his abode about Eleutherae, a city
of Boeotia?

_Question 105._ For what cause was it, that on high holidays it
was not a custom for virgins to marry, but widows did marry then?

_Solution._ Is the reason, as Varro saith, that virgins, forsooth,
are married weeping, but women with joyful glee, and people are to
do nothing of a holiday with a heavy heart nor by compulsion? Or
rather is it because it is decent for virgins to marry with more than
a few present, but for widows to marry with a great many present is
indecent? For the first marriage is zealously affected, the second to
be deprecated; yea, they are ashamed to marry a second husband while
their first husband lives, and they grieve at doing so even when he is
dead. Hence they are pleased more with silence than with tumults and
pompous doings; and the feasts do attract the generality of people to
them, so that they cannot be at leisure on holidays for such wedding
solemnities. Or was it that they that robbed the Sabines of their
daughters that were virgins on the feast-day raised thereby a war, and
looked therefore upon it as unlucky to marry virgins on holidays?

_Question 106._ Why do the Romans worship Fortuna Primigenia?

_Solution._ Was it because Servius, being by Fortune born of
a servant-maid, came to rule king in Rome with great splendor? And
this is the supposition of most Romans. Or rather is it that Fortune
hath bestowed on Rome itself its very original and birth? Or may not
this matter require a more natural and philosophical reason, even
that Fortune is the original of all things and that Nature itself is
produced out of things that come by Fortune, when events that come by
chance fall into an order among themselves?

_Question 107._ Why do the Romans call the artists who appear in
the worship of Bacchus _histriones_?

_Solution._ Is it for the reason which C. Rufus tells us? For he
says, that in ancient time, C. Sulpicius and Licinius Stolo, being
consuls, a pestilence raging in Rome, all the actors upon the stage
were cut off; wherefore, upon the request of the Romans, many and good
artists came from Etruria, among whom he that excelled in fame and had
been longest experienced on the public stages was called Histrus, and
from him they named all the stage-players.

_Question 108._ Why do not men marry women that are near akin?

_Solution._ Is this the reason, that they design by marriage to
augment their family concerns and to procure many relations, by giving
wives to strangers and marrying wives out of other families? Or do
they suspect that the contentions that would happen among relations
upon marriage would destroy even natural rights? Or is it that,
considering that wives by reason of weakness stand in need of many
helpers, they would not have near akin marry together, that their own
kindred might stand by them when their husbands wrong them?

_Question 109._ Why is it not lawful for the high priest of
Jupiter, which they call Flamen Dialis, to touch meal or leaven?

_Solution._ Is it because meal is imperfect and crude nourishment?
For the wheat neither hath continued what it was, neither is it made
into bread as it must be; but it hath lost the faculty of seed, and
hath not attained to usefulness for food. Wherefore the poet hath
named meal, by a metaphor, _mill-murdered_ (μυλήφατον), as if the
corn were spoiled and destroyed by grinding. Leaven, as it is made by
corruption, corrupts the mass that it is mingled with, for it is made
thereby looser and weaker; and fermentation is a kind of corruption,
which, if it be over much, makes the bread sour and spoils it.

_Question 110._ Why is the same high priest forbid to touch raw
flesh?

_Solution._ Is it because custom makes them averse enough to
raw flesh? Or is it that the same reason that makes them averse to
meal doth also make them averse to flesh; for it is neither a living
creature nor dressed food? Roasting or boiling, being an alteration and
change, doth change its form; but fresh and raw flesh offers not a pure
and unpolluted object to the eye, but such as is offensive to the eye,
and like that of a raw wound.

_Question 111._ Why do they require the priest to abstain from a
dog and a goat, and neither to touch or name them?

_Solution._ Was it that they abominated the lasciviousness and
stink of a goat, or that they suspected it to be a diseased creature?
For it seems this animal is more seized with the falling sickness
than other creatures, and is contagious to them that eat or touch it
while it hath this disease; they say, the cause is the straightness
of the windpipe, often intercepting the breath, a sign of which they
make the smallness of their voice to be; for it happens to men that
are epileptical, that they utter a voice sounding much like the bleat
of a goat. Now in a dog there may be less of lasciviousness and of an
ill scent; although some say that dogs are not permitted to go into
the high streets of Athens—no, not into the island Delos—by reason of
their open coition; as if kine, swine, and horses did use coition in
bed-chambers, and not openly and lawlessly. They do not know the true
reason,—that, because a dog is a quarrelsome creature, they therefore
expel dogs out of sanctuaries and sacred temples, giving safe access to
suppliants for refuge. Wherefore it is very likely that the priest of
Jupiter, being (as it were) an animated and sacred image, granted for
refuge to petitioners and suppliants, doth banish or fright away none.
For which cause a couch was set for him in the porch of the house, and
they that fell on their knees before him had indemnity from stripes
or punishment that day; and if one in fetters came and addressed him,
he was unloosed, and his fetters were not laid down by the door but
thrown from the roof. It would be therefore no advantage that he should
carry himself so mild and courteous, if there were a dog at the door,
scaring and frighting them that petitioned for sanctuary. Neither did
the ancients at all repute this creature clean; for he is offered in
sacrifice to none of the celestial Gods, but being sent to Hecate,
an infernal Goddess, at the three cross-ways for a supper, takes a
share in averting calamities and in expiations. In Lacedaemon they cut
puppies in pieces to Mars, that most cruel God. In Boeotia public
expiation is made by passing between the parts of a dog divided in
twain. But the Romans sacrifice a dog in the cleansing month, on the
festival which they call Lupercalia. Hence it was not without cause, to
prohibit them whose charge it was to worship the highest and holiest
God from making a dog familiar and customed to them.

_Question 112._ What is the reason that the priest of Jupiter is
forbid to touch an ivy, or to pass over that way that is overspread
with vine branches?

_Solution._ Is it not of the like nature with those precepts of
Pythagoras, not to eat in a chair, not to sit upon a measure called
a choenix, and not to step over a broom? For the Pythagoreans do not
dread and refrain from these things, but they prohibit other things by
these. Now to go under a vine hath reference to wine, because it is
not lawful for a priest to be drunk. For the wine is above the heads
of those that are drunk, and they are depraved and debased thereby;
whereas it is requisite that they should be above pleasure and conquer
it, but not be subdued by it. As for the ivy,—it being unfruitful and
useless to men, as also infirm, and by reason of its infirmity standing
in need of other trees to climb upon, though by its shadow and sight
of its greenness it doth bewitch the vulgar,—what if they judge it not
convenient to nourish it about a house because it bringeth no profit,
or to suffer it to clasp about any thing, seeing it is so hurtful to
plants that bear it up, while it sticketh fast in the ground? Hence ivy
is forbidden at the Olympic festivals, and neither at Athens in Juno’s
sacrifices, nor at Thebes in those belonging to Venus, can any wild ivy
be seen; though in the Agrionia and Nyctelia (which are services to
Bacchus for the most part performed in the dark) it is to be found. Or
was this a symbol of the prohibition of revels and sports of Bacchus?
For women that were addicted to Bacchanal sports presently ran to
the ivy and plucked it off, tearing it in pieces with their hands and
gnawing it with their mouths, so that they are not altogether to be
disbelieved that say it hath a spirit in it that stirreth and moveth to
madness, transporting and bereaving of the senses, and that alone by
itself it introduceth drunkenness without wine to those that have an
easy inclination to enthusiasm.

_Question 113._ Why are not these priests allowed to take upon
them or attempt civil authority, while they have a lictor and a curule
chair for honor’s sake, and in some sort of consolation for their being
excluded from magistracies?

_Solution._ Was it because in some places of Greece the dignity
of priesthood was equal with kingship, and therefore they designated
not ordinary persons to be priests? Or was it rather,—since they
have appointed office-employments, whereas the charge of kings is
unmethodical and indefinite,—that it would not be possible, if both
fell out at the same time, that he should be able to attend both, but
he must of necessity neglect one (both pressing together upon him),
sometimes neglecting the worship of God, and sometimes injuring the
subjects? Or else, seeing that there is no less necessity than power
attending the administration of civil government, and that the ruler
of the people (as Hippocrates saith of the physician) doth see weighty
matters and hath to do with weighty matters, and from other men’s
calamities procures troubles peculiar to himself, did they think him
not sacred enough to sacrifice to the Gods and manage the sacrifices
who had been present at the condemnation and execution of citizens, and
often of some of his own kindred and family, as happened to Brutus?

GREEK QUESTIONS.

_Question 1._ Who are they at Epidaurus called Κονίποδες and
Ἄρτυνοι?

_Solution._ The managers of the affairs of the commonwealth were
one hundred and eighty men; out of these they elected senators, which
they called ἄρτυνοι. The most part of the common people were conversant
in husbandry; these they called κονίποδες, because (as may be supposed)
they were known by their dirty feet when they came into the city.

_Question 2._ What woman was that among the Cumans called Onobatis?

_Solution._ This was one of the women taken in adultery, which
they brought into the market-place, and set her upon a certain stone
to be seen of all; from thence they took her and set her on ass-back,
and led her round about the city, and afterwards set her up again upon
the stone; the rest of her life she led under disgrace. Her they called
Onobatis (the woman that rode upon an ass); hence they abominated the
stone as unclean. There was also a certain magistrate among them,
called Phylactes (a conservator); he that had this office kept the
prison for the rest of his time; but at the nocturnal convention of
the senators he came into the council, and laying hands on the kings
led them forth, and detained them in custody until the senate had
determined concerning them, by a vote given in private, whether they
had acted unrighteously or not.

_Question 3._ Who is the Ὑπεκκαύστρια among the Solenses?

_Solution._ They call the she-priest of Minerva so, because she
offers certain sacrifices and oblations for the averting of impending
calamities.

_Question 4._ Who are the Ἀμνήμονες among the Cnidians, and who is
the Ἀφεστήρ?

_Solution._ The sixty select men chosen from among the nobles,
whom they used as overseers and principal counsellors for life in
matters of greatest concern, they called Amnemones (as a man may
suppose) because they were not accountable to any for what they did,
or verily (in my opinion) rather because they were men carrying much
business in their memories. And he that put questions to vote was
called Aphester.

_Question 5._ Who were the Χρηστοί among the Arcadians and
Lacedaemonians?

_Solution._ When the Lacedaemonians were agreed with the
Tegeats, they made a league with them, and set up a common pillar on
the river Alpheus, upon which this is written, among other things,
“Drive out the Messenians from your borders, and make none of them
χρηστοί, _good_.” Aristotle interpreting this saith, that none
of the Tegeats ought to be slain that endeavored to bring aid to the
Lacedaemonians.

_Question 6._ Who is Κριθολόγος among the Opuntians?

_Solution._ The most of the Greeks did use barley at their ancient
sacrifices, when the citizens offered their first-fruits; now they
called him Crithologus who presided over the sacrifices and received
the first-fruits. They had two priests, one that had the chief charge
of the divine things, the other of daemonic affairs.

_Question 7._ What sort of clouds are the Ploiades?

_Solution._ Showering clouds which were carried up and down
were, for the most part, called Ploiades, as Theophrastus hath said
expressly in his fourth book of Meteors: “Whereas indeed the Ploiades
are those clouds which have a consistency and are not so movable, but
as to color white, which discover a kind of different matter, neither
very watery nor very windy.”

_Question 8._ Who is called Platychaetas among the Boeotians?

_Solution._ They that had many neighboring houses or bordering
fields were so called in the Aeolic dialect, as having wide
domains.[163] I will add one saying out of the Thesmophylacian law,
seeing there are many....

_Question 9._ Who is he among the people of Delphi who is called
Ὁσιωτήρ? And why do they call one of the months Bysius?

_Solution._ They call the slain sacrifice Ὁσιωτήρ when the ὅσιος
(_the holy one_) is declared. There are five of these holy ones
for life, and these transact many things with the prophets, and
sacrifice together with them, supposing that they are descended from
Deucalion. The month Bysius, as many think, is the same as Φύσιος
(_natural_), for it is in the beginning of the spring, when
most things do sprout and put forth buds. But this is not the true
reason. For the Delphians do not use _b_ for _ph_ (as the
Macedonians, who say Bilippus, Balacrus, and Beronica, for Philippus,
Phalacrus, and Pheronica), but instead of _p_; they for the most
part saying βατεῖν for πατεῖν, and βικρόν for πικρόν.
Therefore they say Bysius for Pysius, because in that month they
enquire of and consult their God Apollo. This is their genuine and
country way of speaking. For in that month an oracle is given forth,
and they call that week the nativity of Apollo, and the name is
Polythous, not because of their baking a sort of cakes called Pthides,
but because then their oracle is full of answers and prophecies. For
it is but of late that oraculous answers were given to the enquirers
every month. In former times Pythia gave answers only once a year,
which was on this day, as Callisthenes and Anaxandridas have told us.

_Question 10._ What is Phyxemelum?

_Solution._ It is one of the small plants that creep upon the
ground, upon whose branches the cattle treading do hinder, hurt,
and spoil their growth. Where therefore they have attained some
considerable bigness by growth, and escaped the injury of those that
use to feed upon them, they are called φυξίμηλα (i.e. that have escaped
the danger of cattle), of which Aeschylus is witness.

_Question 11._ Who are the Ἀποσφενδόνητοι?

_Solution._ The Eretrians inhabited the island of Corcyra. But
when Charicrates set sail from Corinth with a considerable strength
and overcame them in battle, the Eretrians took shipping and sailed to
their native country; of which thing the inhabitants of that country
having timely notice, gave them a repulse, and by slinging stones at
them impeded their landing. Now being not able either to persuade or
force their way, seeing the multitude was implacably bent against them,
they sailed into Thrace and took possession of that country, where
they say Metho first inhabited, of whose offspring Orpheus was. The
city therefore they call Methone, and of the neighboring inhabitants
the men are called Aposphendoneti, i.e. they that were repulsed with
sling-stones.

_Question 12._ What was Charila among the Delphians?

_Solution._ The Delphians solemnized three nonennial feasts in
regular order, of which they call one Stepterium, another Herois,
and the third Charila. The Stepterium represents by imitation the
fight which Apollo had with Python, and both his flight and pursuit
after the fight unto Tempe. For some say that he fled, as needing
purification by reason of the slaughter; others say that he pursued
Python wounded, and flying along the highway which they now call
Sacred, he just missed of being present at his death; for he found him
just dead of his wound, and buried by his son, whose name was Aix, as
they say. Stepterium therefore is the representation of these or some
such things. But as to Herois, it hath for the most part a mysterious
reason which the Thyades are acquainted with; but by the things that
are publicly acted one may conjecture it to be the calling up of Semele
from the lower world. Concerning Charila, they fable some such things
as these. A famine by reason of drought seized the Delphians, who
came with their wives and children as suppliants to the king’s gate,
whereupon he distributed meal and pulse to the better known among them,
for there was not sufficient for all. A little orphan girl yet coming
and importuning him, he beat her with his shoe, and threw his shoe in
her face. She indeed was a poor wandering beggar-wench, but was not
of an ignoble disposition; therefore withdrawing herself, she untied
her girdle and hanged herself. The famine hereupon increasing and many
diseases accompanying it, Pythia gives answer to the king, that the
maid Charila who slew herself must be expiated. They with much ado at
last discovering that this was the maid’s name which was smitten with a
shoe, they instituted a certain sacrifice mixed with expiatory rites,
which they yet solemnize to this day every ninth year. Whereat the king
presides, distributing meal and pulse to all strangers and citizens
(for they introduce a kind of an effigy of the wench Charila); and when
all have received their doles, the king smites the idol with his shoe.
Upon this the governess of the Thyades takes up the image and carries
it away to some rocky place, and there putting a halter about its
neck, they bury it in the place where they buried Charila when she had
strangled herself.

_Question 13._ What is the beggars’ meat among the Aenianes?

_Solution._ Many have been the removes of the Aenianes. First
they inhabited the plain of Dotion; thence they were expelled by the
Lapithae to the Aethices; from thence they betook themselves to a
region of Molossia about the Aous, where they were called Paravaeans;
afterward they took possession of Cirrha; they had no sooner landed
at Cirrha (Apollo so commanding their king Oenoclus) but they went
down to the country bordering on the river Inachus, inhabited by the
Inachians and Achaeans. There was an oracle given to the latter, that
they would lose all their country if they should part with any of
it,—and to the Aenianes, that they would hold it if they should take it
of such as freely resigned it. Temo, a noted man among the Aenianes,
putting on rags and a scrip, like a beggar, addressed himself to the
Inachians; the king, in a way of reproach and scorn, gave him a clod
of earth. He receives it and puts it up into his scrip, and absconds
himself, making much of his dole; for he presently forsakes the
country, begging no more. The old men wondering at this, the oracle
came fresh to their remembrance; and going to the king, they told him
that he ought not to slight this man, nor suffer him to escape. Temo
well perceiving their designs, hastens his flight, and as he fled,
vowed a hecatomb to Apollo. Upon this occasion the kings fought hand
to hand; and when Phemius, the king of the Aenianes, saw Hyperochus,
the king of the Inachians, charging him with a dog at his heels, he
said he dealt not fairly to bring a second with him to fight him;
whereupon Hyperochus going to drive away the dog, and turning himself
about in order to throw a stone at the dog, Phemius slays him. Thus the
Aenianes possessed themselves of that region, expelling the Inachians
and Achaeans; but they reverence that stone as sacred, and sacrifice
to it, wrapping it in the fat of the victim. And when they offer a
hecatomb to Apollo, they sacrifice an ox to Jupiter, a choice part of
which they distribute to Temo’s posterity, and call it the beggars’
flesh.

_Question 14._ Who were the Coliads among the Ithacans? And what
was a φάγιλος?

_Solution._ After the slaughter of the suitors, some near
related to the deceased made head against Ulysses. Neoptolemus, being
introduced by both parties as an arbitrator, determined that Ulysses
should remove and hasten out of Cephalenia, Zacynthus, and Ithaca,
because of the blood that he had shed there; but that the friends and
relations of the suitors should pay a yearly mulct to Ulysses, for the
wrong done to his family. Ulysses therefore passed over into Italy;
the mulct he devoted to his son, and commanded the Ithacans to pay it.
The mulct was meal, wine, honey-combs, oil, salt, and for victims the
better grown of the _phagili_. Aristotle saith _phagilus_
was a lamb. And Telemachus, setting Eumaeus and his people at liberty,
placed them among the citizens; and the family of the Coliads is
descended from Eumaeus, and that of the Bucolians from Philoetius.

_Question 15._ What is the wooden dog among the Locrians?

_Solution._ Locrus was the son of Fuscius, the son of Amphictyon.
Of him and Cabya came Locrus, with whom his father falling into
contention, and gathering after him a great number of citizens,
consulted the oracle about transplanting a colony. The oracle told him
that there he should build a city, where he should happen to be bit by
a wooden dog. He, wafting over the sea unto the next shore, trod upon
a cynosbatus (a sweet brier), and being sorely pained with the prick,
he spent many days there; in which time considering the nature of the
country, he built Physcus and Hyantheia, and other towns which the
Ozolian Locrians inhabited. Some say that the Locrians were called
Ozolians (strong-scented people) from Nessus—others again from Python
the serpent—cast up there by the surf of the sea, and putrefying upon
the shore. And some say that the men wore pelts and ram-goat skins,
living for the most part among the herds of goats, and therefore were
strong-scented. Others contrariwise say that the country brought forth
many flowers, and that this name was from their sweet odor; among them
that assert this is Archytas the Amphissean, who hath wrote thus:

Macyna crowned with vines fragrant and sweet.

_Question 16._ What manner of thing is that among the Megarians
called ἀφάβρωμα?

_Solution._ Nisus, of whom Nisaea had its name, in the time of his
reign married Abrota of Boeotia, the daughter of Onchestus and sister
of Megareus, a woman (as it seems) excelling in prudence and singularly
modest. When she died, the Megarians cordially lamented her; and Nisus,
willing to perpetuate her memory and renown, gave command that the
Megarian women should dress in apparel like unto that which she wore,
and that dress they called for her sake aphabroma. And verily it is
manifest that the oracle countenanced the veneration of this woman; for
when the Megarian women would often have altered their garments, the
oracle prohibited it.

_Question 17._ Who was called δορύξενος?

_Solution._ The country of Megaris was anciently settled in
villages, the inhabitants being divided into five parts; and they
were called Heraenians, Piraenians, Megarians, Cynosurians, and
Tripodiscaeans. These the Corinthians drew into a civil war, for they
always contrived to bring the Megarians into their power. Yet they
waged war with much moderation and neighborly designs; for no man did
at all injure the husbandman, and there was a stated ransom determined
for all that were taken captives. And this they received after the
release of the prisoner, and not before; but he that took the captive
prisoner brought him home, gave him entertainment, and then gave him
liberty to depart to his own house. Wherefore he that brought in the
price of his ransom was applauded, and remained the friend of him that
received it, and was called _doryxenus_, from his being a captive
by the spear; but he that dealt fraudulently was reputed an unjust and
unfaithful person, not only by the enemy but by his fellow-citizens
also.

_Question 18._ What is παλιντοκία?

_Solution._ When the Megarians had expelled Theagenes the tyrant,
they managed the commonweal for some time with moderation. But then
(to speak with Plato), when their orators had filled out to them, even
to excess, the pure strong wine of liberty, they became altogether
corrupt, and the poor carried themselves insolently toward the richer
sort in this among other things, that they entered into their houses
and demanded that they might be feasted and sumptuously treated. But
where they prevailed not, they used violence and abusive behavior, and
at last enacted a law to enable them to fetch back from the usurers
the use-money which at any time they had paid, calling the execution
thereof _palintocia_, i.e. the returning of use-money.

_Question 19._ What is the Anthedon of which Pythia speaks,

Drink wine on th’ lees, Anthedon’s not thy home?

For Anthedon in Boeotia did not produce much wine.

_Solution._ Of old they called Calauria Irene from a woman Irene,
which they fable to be the daughter of Neptune and Melanthea, the
daughter of Alpheus. Afterwards, when the people of Anthes and Hyperes
planted there, they called the island Anthedonia and Hyperia. The
oracle, as Aristotle saith, was this:

Drink wine on th’ lees, Anthedon’s not thy home,
Nor sacred Hypera where thou drank’st pure wine.

Thus Aristotle; but Mnasigeiton saith that Anthus, who was brother to
Hypera, was lost when he was an infant, and Hypera rambling about to
find him, came at Pherae to Acastus (or Adrastus), where by chance he
found Anthus serving as a wine-drawer. There while they were feasting,
the boy bringing a cup of wine to his sister, he knew her, and said to
her softly,

Drink wine on th’ lees, Anthedon’s not thy home.

_Question 20._ What is that darkness at the oak, spoken of in
Priene?

_Solution._ The Samians and Prienians waging war with each other,
as at other times they sufficiently injured each other, so at a certain
great fight the Prienians slew a thousand of the Samians. Seven years
after, fighting with the Milesians at the said oak, they lost all
the principal and chief of their citizens together, at the time when
Bias the Wise (who was sent ambassador from Priene to Samos) was
famous. This grievous and sad calamity befalling the women, there was
established an execration and oath—to be taken about matters of the
greatest concern—by “the Darkness at the Oak,” because their children,
fathers, and husbands were there slain.

_Question 21._ Who were they among the Cretans called Κατακαῦται?

_Solution._ They say that the Tyrrhenians took away by force from
Brauron the daughters and wives of the Athenians, at the time when
they inhabited Lemnos and Imbros; from whence being driven they came
to Laconia, and fell into a commixture with that people, even so far
as to beget children on the native women. Thus, by reason of jealousy
and calumnies, they were again constrained to leave Laconia, and with
their wives and children to waft over into Crete, having Pollis and
his brother their governors. There waging war with the inhabitants
of Crete, they were fain to permit many of them that were slain in
battle to lie unburied; in that at first they had no leisure, by reason
of the war and peril they were in, and afterwards they shunned the
touching of the dead corpses, being corrupted by time and putrefied.
Therefore Pollis contrived to bestow certain dignities, privileges, and
immunities, some on the priests of the Gods, and some on the buriers
of the dead, consecrating their honors to the infernal Deities, that
they should remain perpetual to them. Then he divided to his brother a
share by lot. The first he named priests, the others _catacautae_
(burners). But as to the government, each of them managed it apart,
and had, among other tranquillities, an immunity from those injurious
practices which other Cretans were wont to exercise towards one another
privily; for they neither wronged them, nor filched or robbed any thing
from them.

_Question 22._ What was the Sepulchre of the Boys at Chalcedon?

_Solution._ Cothus and Arclus the sons of Zuthus came to Euboea
to dwell, the Aeolians possessing the greatest part of the island at
that time. The oracle told Cothus, that he should prosper and conquer
his enemies if he bought the country. Therefore, going on shore a
little after, he happened to meet with some children playing by the
seaside; whereupon he fell to play with them, conforming himself to
their humors and showing them many outlandish toys. Seeing the children
very desirous to have these, he refused to give them any upon any other
terms than to receive land for them. The boys, taking up some earth
from the ground, gave it to him, receiving the toys, and departed. The
Aeolians perceiving what was done,—and the enemies sailing in upon
them,—moved by indignation and grief, slew the children and buried them
near the wayside that goes from the city to the Euripus; and that
place is called the Sepulchre of the Boys.

_Question 23._ Who is Μιξαρχαγέτας in Argos? And who are the
Ἐλάσιοι?

_Solution._ They call Castor Mixarchagetas, and are of opinion
that he was buried in the country; but they worship Pollux as one of
the celestial Deities. Those which they supposed were able to drive
away the falling sickness, they called Elasii (expellers), esteeming
them to be of the posterity of Alexida the daughter of Amphiaraus.

_Question 24._ What is that which is called ἔγκνισμα by the
Argives?

_Solution._ It was a custom among those that lost any of their
kindred or acquaintance, presently after mourning to sacrifice to
Apollo, and thirty days after to Mercury. For they are of opinion that,
as the earth receives the bodies of the deceased, so Mercury receives
their souls. Giving then barley to Apollo’s minister, they take the
flesh of the sacrifice, and extinguishing the fire as polluted but
kindling it again afresh, they boil this flesh, calling it ἔγκνισμα.

_Question 25._ Who are Ἀλάστωρ, Ἀλιτήριος, and Παλαμναῖος?

_Solution._ For we must not give credit to those that say that
such are called _aliterii_ who, in the time of dearth, watch the
miller (ἀλοῦντα ἐπιτηροῦντες) and steal the corn. But he was called
Alastor who did exploits not to be forgotten (ἄληστα) but to be had
in remembrance for a long time. Aliterius is he whom we should avoid
(ἀλεύασθαι) and observe upon the account of his knavery. Such things
(saith Socrates) were engraven in plates of brass.

_Question 26._ What is the meaning of this, that the virgins that
follow those that lead the ox from Aenos to Cassiopaea sing, till they
approach the borders, in this manner,

To native country dear O may ye ne’er return?

_Solution._ The Aenianes, being first driven out by the Lapithae,
took up their habitation about Aethacia, and then about Molossis and
Cassiopaea. But the country affording no staple commodity, and being
ill bestead with troublesome neighbors, they went into the Cirraean
plain, under the conduct of Oenoclus their king. And when there were
great droughts there, by warning from an oracle (as they say) they
stoned Oenoclus; and betaking themselves to ramble again, they came
into this country which they now possess, being very pleasant and
fruitful. Whence with good reason they pray to the Gods that they may
never return again to their ancient native country, but may abide where
they are in prosperity.

_Question 27._ What is the reason that at Rhodes the crier never
enters into the chapel of Ocridion?

_Solution._ Was it because Ochimus espoused his daughter Cydippe
to Ocridion? But Cercaphus, who was brother to Ochimus, falling in love
with the maid, persuaded the crier (for it was the custom to fetch the
brides by the crier) to bring her to him when she should be delivered
to him. This being accordingly done, Cercaphus got the maid and fled;
afterwards, when Ochimus was grown old, he returned. Wherefore it was
enacted by the Rhodians that a crier should not enter into the chapel
of Ocridion, because of the injustice done by him.

_Question 28._ What is the reason that at Tenedos a piper might
not go into the temple of Tenes, and that no mention might be made of
Achilles in that temple?

_Solution._ Was it because, when his step-mother accused Tenes
that he would have lain with her, Molpus a piper bore false witness
against him; whereupon Tenes took occasion to fly into Tenedos with his
sister? And they say that Achilles was strictly charged by Thetis his
mother not to slay Tenes, as one that was much respected by Apollo,
and that the Goddess committed the trust to one of the household
servants that he should take special care and put him in mind of it,
lest Achilles should kill Tenes at unawares. But when Achilles made
an incursion into Tenedos and pursued the sister of Tenes, being very
fair, Tenes met him and defended his sister; whereupon she escaped,
but Tenes was slain. Achilles, knowing him as he fell down dead, slew
his own servant, because he being present did not admonish him to the
contrary. He buried Tenes, whose temple now remains, into which no
piper enters, nor is Achilles named there.

_Question 29._ Who was the πωλήτης amongst the Epidamnians?

_Solution._ The Epidamnians, who were neighboring to the
Illyrians, perceiving that the citizens that had frequent commerce
with them were debauched, and fearing an innovation, made choice of an
approved man yearly from amongst them, who should deal as a factor with
the barbarians in all matters of trade and traffic, managing the whole
business of dealing and commerce on the behalf of all the citizens; and
this man was called _poletes_, or the seller.

_Question 30._ What is the shore of Araenus in Thrace?

_Solution._ The Andrians and Chalcidians sailing into Thrace to
get them a seat, the city Sane being betrayed was delivered up to
them both in common; and being told that Acanthus was deserted by the
barbarians, they sent two spies thither. These approaching the city
and perceiving all the enemies to be fled, the Chalcidian outruns
the other, intending to seize the city for the Chalcidians; but the
Andrian, finding himself not able to overtake him, darts his lance and
fixeth it exactly in the gates, and saith that he had first seized the
city for the Andrians. Hence a great contention arising, they agreed
together without a war to make the Erythraeans, Samians, and Parians
umpires in all matters of controversy between them. The Erythraeans and
Samians brought in the verdict for the Andrians, but the Parians for
the Chalcidians; hence the Andrians about this place bound themselves
under a curse, that they would not give wives in marriage to the
Parians nor take wives of them. Therefore they called the place the
Shore of Araenus (i.e. of the curse), whereas before it was called the
Shore of the Dragon.

_Question 31._ In the solemn feasts to the honor of Ceres, why do
the Eretrian women roast their meat not at the fire, but by the sun;
and why do they not call upon Kalligeneia?

_Solution._ Was it because it came in course to the women which
Agamemnon carried captive from Troy to solemnize a feast to Ceres in
this place, and while they were so doing, a fair wind arose, and they
suddenly made sail, leaving the sacrifices imperfect.

_Question 32._ Who were the Ἀειναῦται amongst the Milesians?

_Solution._ The tyrants Thoas and Damasenor being deposed, two
factions got the government of the city, one of which was called
Ploutis, the other Cheiromacha, and the potent men prevailing, they
settled the state affairs in the association. And when they would sit
in council about matters of greatest concern, they went on ship-board
and launched out to a great distance from the shore; and when they were
agreed upon a point in debate, they sailed back again, and upon this
account were called ἀειναῦται (_perpetual mariners_).

_Question 33._ Why do the Chalcidians call a certain place about
Pyrsopius the Ἀκμαίων Λέσχη, _the Youth’s Conventicle_?

_Solution._ They say that Nauplius, being persecuted by the
Achaeans, addressed himself to the Chalcidians for redress, making
his defence against the accusation and recriminating on the Achaeans.
Whereupon the Chalcidians, refusing to deliver him into their hands
lest he should be slain by treachery, granted him a guard of lusty
young men, and appointed their post in that place where they had mutual
society together and guarded Nauplius.

_Question 34._ Who was he that sacrificed an ox to his benefactor?

_Solution._ In a haven of Ithaca there was a pirate ship, in which
happened to be an old man who had earthen pots holding pitch. It fell
out that an Ithacan skipper named Pyrrhias put into this port, who
ransomed the old man upon free cost, only upon his supplication and
out of commiseration towards him, and at the request of the old man
he purchased also some of his tar-pots. The pirates departing and all
fear of danger over, the old fellow brings Pyrrhias to his earthen
pots, and shows him a great deal of gold and silver blended amongst
the pitch; whereupon Pyrrhias attaining to great riches treated the
old man well in all respects, and sacrificed an ox to him. Hence they
say proverbially that none hath sacrificed an ox to his benefactor but
Pyrrhias.

_Question 35._ Why was there a custom amongst the Bottiaean maids,
as they danced, to sing, “Let us go to Athens”?

_Solution._ It is reported that the Cretans (in payment of a vow)
sent the firstlings of men to Delphi; but when such as were sent found
no plentiful provision there, they departed from thence in search of
a plantation, and first sat down at Japygia. From thence they went
and possessed that part of Thrace which now they have, Athenians
being mixed with them; for it is probable that Minos did not destroy
those young men which the Athenians sent in a way of tribute, but
only detained them in servitude. Some that were descended from these
and were accounted Cretans were sent with others to Delphi; so the
Bottiaean daughters, in remembrance of their pedigree, sing on their
feast-days, “Let us go to Athens.”

_Question 36._ Why do the Eleian women in their hymns beseech
Bacchus that he will come to their help with an ox’s foot? The hymns
run thus: “Come, O hero Bacchus, to thy holy temple placed by the sea;
hasten with the Graces to thy temple with a neat’s foot.” Then they
re-double this, “O worthy Bull”!

_Solution._ Was it because some call Bacchus Bull-begot, and
some Bull? Or as some say ox-foot for a great foot; as the poet saith
ox-eye for a great eye, and βουλάϊος for haughty? Or is it rather,
because the foot of an ox is innocent and his bearing horns on his
head is pernicious, that so they desire the God may come to them mild
and harmless? Or is it because many men are of opinion that this God
presides over ploughing and sowing?

_Question 37._ What is the meaning of that place at Tanagra,
before the city, called Achilleum? For it is reported that the city had
rather enmity than kindness for Achilles, in that he took Stratonice,
the mother of Poemander, by force of arms, and slew Acestor the son of
Ephippus.

_Solution._ Now Poemander the father of Ephippus (whilst the
region of Tanagra was still inhabited by villagers), being besieged in
Stephon (a village so called) by the Achaeans because he refused to
aid them in the wars, left that country the same night, and fortified
Poemandria. Policrithus the architect coming in, disparaging his works
and making a ridicule of them, leaped over the ditch; Poemander,
falling into a rage, catched up a great stone suddenly to throw at
him, which had been hid there a great while, lying over some sacred
nocturnal relics. This Poemander hurling rashly slung, and missing
Policrithus, slew his own son Leucippus. He was then forced by law
to depart out of Boeotia and become a wandering and begging pilgrim;
neither was that easy for him to do, because of the incursions which
the Achaeans made into the region of Tanagra. Wherefore he sent
Ephippus his son to beg aid of Achilles. He by persuasion prevailed
with Achilles to come, with Tlepolemus the son of Hercules, and with
Peneleos the son of Hippalcmus, all of them their kindred. By these
Poemander was introduced into Chalcis, and was absolved by Elephenor
from the murder; he ascribed great honor to these men, and assigned
groves to each of them, of which this kept the name of Achilles’s Grove.

_Question 38._ Who amongst the Boeotians were the Ψολόεις, and who
the Ὀλεῖαι?

_Solution._ They say that Minos’s daughters—Leucippe, Arsinoe,
and Alcathoe—falling mad, had a greedy appetite for man’s flesh,
and accordingly cast lots for their children. Whereupon it fell to
Leucippe’s lot to produce her son Hippasus to be cut in pieces. The
husbands of these women, that were clothed in coarse apparel by reason
of sorrow and grief, were called Psoloeis, the women Ὀλεῖαι, that is
ὀλοαί (_destructive_). And to this day the Orchomenians call
their posterity so. And it is so ordered that, in the yearly feast
called Agrionia, there is a flight and pursuit of them by the priest
of Bacchus, with a drawn sword in his hand. It is lawful for him to
slay any of them that he takes, and Zoilus a priest of our time slew
one. This thing proved unlucky to them; for Zoilus, sickening upon a
wound that he got, wasted away for a long time and died; whereupon
the Orchomenians, falling under public accusations and condemnations,
removed the priesthood from their family, and made choice of the best
man in the whole multitude.

_Question 39._ Why do the Arcadians stone those that go willingly
into the Lycaeum, while those that go in ignorantly they carry forth to
Eleutherae?

_Solution._ Is it on the ground that they gained their liberty by
being thus absolved, that the story has gained credit? And is this
saying “to Eleutherae” the same as “into the region of security,”
or “thou shalt come to the seat of pleasure”? Or is the reason to
be rendered according to that fabulous story, that of all the sons
of Lycaon Eleuther and Lebadus alone were free from that conspiracy
against Jupiter, and fled into Boeotia, where the Lebadenses use the
like civil polity to that of the Arcadians, and therefore they send
them to Eleutherae that enter unwittingly into the inaccessible temple
of Jupiter? Or is it (as Architimus saith in his remarks on Arcadia)
that some that went into the Lycaeum unawares were delivered up to the
Phliasians by the Arcadians, and by the Phliasians to the Megarians,
and by the Megarians to the Thebans which inhabit about Eleutherae,
where they are detained under rain, thunder, and other direful
judgments from Heaven; and upon this account some say this place was
called Eleutherae. But the report is not true that he that enters into
the Lycaeum casts no shadow, though it hath had a firm belief. And
what if this be the reason of that report, that the air converted into
clouds looks darkly on them that go in? Or that he that goes in falls
down dead?—for the Pythagoreans say that the souls of the deceased do
neither give a shadow nor wink. Or is it that the sun only makes a
shadow, and the law bereaveth him that entereth here of the sight of
the sun? Though this they speak enigmatically; for verily he that goes
in is called Elaphus, _a stag_. Hence the Lacedaemonians delivered
up to the Arcadians Cantharion the Arcadian, who went over to the
Eleans whilst they waged war with the Arcadians, passing with his booty
through the inaccessible temple, and fled to Sparta when the war was
ended; the oracle requiring them to restore the stag.

_Question 40._ Who is Eunostus, the hero of Tanagra; and what is
the reason that women may not enter into his grove?

_Solution._ Eunostus was the son of Elieus who came of Cephisus
and Scias, but they say received his name from Eunosta, the nymph that
brought him up. This man was honest and just, and no less temperate and
austere. They say that Ochna his niece fell in love with him, who was
one of the daughters of Colonus; and when he perceived that she tempted
him to lie with her, manifesting his indignation he went and accused
her to her brethren. But she had cried Whore first and provoked her
brethren, Echimus, Leon, and Bucolus, to kill Eunostus, by her false
suggestion that he would have forced her; wherefore these laid wait for
the young man and slew him, upon which Elieus secured them. Now Ochna
growing penitent and full of terror, as well to discharge the grief
she had for her beloved as out of commiseration towards her brethren,
confesses the whole truth to Elieus, and he declares it to Colonus,
who condemned them. Whereupon Ochna’s brethren fled, but she broke her
neck from some high place, as Myrtis the Anthedonian poetess hath told
us. Therefore he kept the tomb and grove of Eunostus from the access
and approach of women, insomuch that upon earthquakes, droughts, and
other portents that often there happened, the Tanagrians made diligent
search whether any woman had not by stealth got nigh to that place.
And there are some (of whom Clidamus, a man of great fame, is one)
who report that Eunostus met them as he was going to the sea to wash
himself because a woman had entered into his grove. Diocles also, in
his Treatise concerning Shrines, relates the edict of the Tanagrians
upon the things that Clidamus declared.

_Question 41._ Whence is it that in Boeotia there is a river at
Eleon called Scamander?

_Solution._ Deimachus, the son of Eleon and intimate friend of
Hercules, bore his part in the siege of Troy. But the war proving
long (as it seems), he took to him Glaucia the daughter of Scamander
who had fallen in love with him, and got her with child: soon after,
fighting against the Trojans, he was slain. Glaucia, fearing that she
might be apprehended, fled to Hercules, and acquainted him with her
late affection towards Deimachus, and the familiarity she had with
him. Hercules, both out of commiseration to the woman, as also for joy
that there was an offspring left of so good a man and his intimate
acquaintance, took Glaucia on shipboard; and when she was delivered of
a son, brought her into Boeotia, and committed her and her child to the
care of Eleon. The son was named Scamander, and came to reign over that
country. He called the river Inachus by his own name Scamander, and
the next rivulet he named from his mother Glaucia; but the fountain he
called Acidusa by his own wife’s name, by whom he had three daughters,
which they have a veneration for to this day, styling them virgins.

_Question 42._ Whence was that proverbial speech, “Let this
prevail”?

_Solution._ Dinon the Tarentine general, being a man well skilled
in military affairs, when the citizens manifested their dislike of
a certain opinion of his by lifting up of hands, as the crier was
declaring the majority of votes, stretched forth his right hand and
said, This is better. Thus Theophrastus hath told the story; and
Apollodorus in his Rhytinus adds this: When the crier had said, ‘These
are the most suffrages;’ ‘Aye, but,’ saith Dinon, ‘these are the best,’
and ratifies the suffrages of the minority.

_Question 43._ Why is the city of the Ithacans called Alalcomenae?

_Solution._ It is affirmed by most, that it was because Anticlea
in the time of her virginity was forcibly seized upon by Sisyphus, and
brought forth Ulysses. But Ister the Alexandrian hath acquainted us in
his memoirs, that Anticlea was married to Laertes, and being brought
to a place about the Alalcomeneum in Boeotia, was delivered of Ulysses;
and therefore Ulysses called the city of Ithaca by the same name, to
renew the memory of the place in which he had been born.

_Question 44._ Who are the _Monophagi_ in Aegina?

_Solution._ Many of the Aeginetans that fought against Troy were
slain in those wars, but more of them by storm in the voyaging by
sea. The relations therefore receiving those few that were left, and
observing the other citizens overwhelmed with sorrow and grief, thought
it not convenient to make any public appearances of joy or to sacrifice
to the Gods; but every one entertained privately in his own house
his relations that were escaped with feasts and entertainments, they
themselves giving attendance to their fathers, kinsfolks, brethren,
and acquaintance, none of other families being admitted thereto. Hence
in imitation of these they celebrate a sacrifice to Neptune, which is
called the Thiasi, in which they revel without any noise, each family
apart by itself, for the space of sixteen days, without any servant
attending them; then offering sacrifices to Venus, they finish this
solemn feast. Upon this account they are called Monophagi, i.e. such as
feed apart by themselves.

_Question 45._ What is the reason that the statue of Labradean
Jupiter in Caria is made so as to hold an axe lifted up, and not a
sceptre or thunderbolt.

_Solution._ Because Hercules slaying Hippolyta, and taking away
from her amongst other weapons her pole-axe, presented it to Omphale.
After Omphale the kings of the Lydians carried it, as part of the
sacred regalities which they took by succession, until Candaules,
disdaining it, gave it to one of his favorites to carry. But afterwards
Gyges revolting waged war against him; Arselis also came to the aid
of Gyges from the Mylassians with a great strength, slew Candaules
with his favorite, and carried away the pole-axe into Caria with other
spoils; where furbishing up the statue of Jupiter, he put the axe into
his hand and called it the Labradean God,—for the Lydians call an axe
_labra_.

_Question 46._ What is the reason that the Trallians call the
pulse ὄροβος by the name καθαρτής (i.e. _purifying_), and use it
especially in expiations and purifications.

_Solution._ Was it because the Leleges and Minyae, in former times
driving out the Trallians, possessed themselves of the city and that
country, and afterwards the Trallians returned and conquered them; and
as many of the Leleges as were not slain or fled, but by reason of
indigency and weakness were left there, they made no account of whether
they lived or died, and therefore enacted a law that any Trallian that
slew one of the Minyae or Leleges should be guiltless, provided only
that he paid a measure of this pulse to the relatives of the slain
person?

_Question 47._ Why is it spoken by way of proverb amongst the
Eleans, “Thou sufferest worse things than Sambicus”?

_Solution._ It is said that one Sambicus an Elean, having many
comrades with him, did break off many of the devoted bronze offerings
placed in Olympia and disposed of them, and at length robbed the
temple of Diana the Bishopess (which temple is in Elis, and is called
Aristarchaeum]. Presently after the committing of this sacrilege, he
was taken and tormented the space of a year, being examined concerning
all his accessories, and so died; hence this proverb arose from his
suffering.

_Question 48._ Why is the temple of Ulysses in Lacedaemon built
hard by the monument of the Leucippides?

_Solution._ One Ergiaeus, of the posterity of Diomedes, by the
persuasion of Temenus stole the Palladium from Argos, Leager being
conscious of and accessory to the felony, for he was one of the
intimates of Temenus. Afterward Leager, by reason of a feud betwixt him
and Temenus, went over into Lacedaemon and transported the Palladium
thither. The kings receive him readily, and place the Palladium next to
the temple of the Leucippides, and sending to Delphi consult the oracle
about its safety and preservation. The oracle answered that they must
make one of them that stole it the keeper of it. So they erected there
the monument of Ulysses, especially since they supposed that hero was
related to the city by the marriage of Penelope.

_Question 49._ What is the reason that it is a custom amongst the
Chalcedonian women, that, if at any time they happen to meet with other
women’s husbands, especially magistrates, they cover one cheek?

_Solution._ The Chalcedonians warred against the Bithynians, being
provoked thereto by every kind of injury. And Zipoetus being king of
the Bithynians, they brought out all their forces, with the addition of
Thracian auxiliaries, and were wasting the country with fire and sword.
Zipoetus then pitching his camp against them at a place called Phalium,
the Chalcedonians, fighting ill through desperateness and disorder,
lost about eight thousand soldiers, but were not all cut off, Zipoetus
in favor of the Byzantines yielding to a cessation of arms. Now, there
being a great scarcity of men in the city of Chalcedon, most of the
women were necessitated to marry their freedmen and aliens; others that
chose widowhood rather than marriage to such, if they had any occasion
to go before judges or magistrates, managed their own affairs, only
withdrawing their veil from one side of their face. Then the married
women, imitating these as their betters, for modesty’s sake took up the
same custom.

_Question 50._ Why do the Argives bring their sheep to the grove
of Agenor to take ram?

_Solution._ Was it because Agenor took care to have the fairest
sheep, and of all kings possessed the most flocks of sheep?

_Question 51._ Why did the Argive boys on a certain feast-day call
themselves Ballacrades in sport?

_Solution._ Was it because they report that the first people
that were brought by Inachus out of the countries into the plains,
lived upon ἀχράδες, i.e. _wild pears_? But wild pears were first
discovered by the Grecians in Peloponnesus, while that country was
called Apia, whence wild pears came afterwards to be called ἄπιοι.

_Question 52._ For what reason do the men of Elis lead their mares
out of their borders when they would have them leaped by their horses?

_Solution._ Was it that of all kings Oenomaus was the greatest
lover of horses, and being most fond of this creature, imprecated many
and great curses upon horses that should leap mares in Elis; wherefore
the people, fearing his curse, do abominate this thing?

_Question 53._ What was the reason of the custom amongst the
Gnossians, that those who borrowed money upon usury should snatch it
and run away?

_Solution._ Was it that, in case they should attempt to defraud
the usurers, they might be liable for the violence, and thereby receive
further punishment?

_Question 54._ What is the cause that in Samos they call upon
Venus of Dexicreon?

_Solution._ Was this the reason, that the women of Samos, by
lasciviousness and bawdry falling into great debauchery, were reformed
by Dexicreon, a mountebank, using some charms towards them? Or was it
because Dexicreon, being the master of a ship, and sailing to Cyprus on
a trading voyage, and being about to take in his lading, was commanded
by Venus to lade with water and nothing else, and sail back with all
possible speed? Being persuaded hereto, he took in much water and
set sail immediately; still winds and a calm detaining him, he sold
his water to merchants and seamen distressed with thirst, whereby he
gathered up much money; from which he erected a statue to Venus, and
called it by his own name. If this story be true, it is manifest that
the Goddess intended not only the enriching of one man, but the saving
of many alive by one man.

_Question 55._ What is the reason that amongst the Samians, when
they sacrifice to Mercury the munificent, they suffer a man to filch
and steal garments if he will?

_Solution._ Because, when at the command of the oracle they
transplanted themselves from that island into Mycale, they lived ten
years upon robbery; and after this, sailing back again into their
island, they conquered their enemies.

_Question 56._ Whence is that place in the island Samos called
Panaema (Πάναιμα)?

_Solution._ Was it because the Amazons, flying before Bacchus
from the coasts of Ephesus, fell upon Samos, and thereupon Bacchus
rigging up his ships wafted over, and joining battle slew abundance of
them about that place, which, by reason of the plenty of blood spilled
there, the beholders by way of admiration called Panaema? Some say
that this slaughter was about Phloeum, and show their bones there; but
others say also that Phloeum was rent off from Samos by the dreadful
and hideous cry that was uttered at their death.

_Question 57._ Upon what account was the Andron in Samos called
Pedetes?

_Solution._ The Geomori got the government into their hands,
after Demoteles was slain, and after the dissolution of his monarchial
constitution. At this time the Megarians waged war with the
Perinthians, being a Samian colony, and brought fetters with them (as
they say) to put on the captives. When the Geomori were acquainted
with these proceedings, they immediately sent aid, sending forth nine
commanders and manning thirty ships, two of which, launching forth and
lying before the haven, were destroyed with lightning. The commanders,
proceeding on their voyage in the rest, subdued the Megarians, and took
six hundred of them alive. They were so elevated with this victory,
that they meditated the subversion of this Geomoran oligarchy; but
the occasion was given by the states themselves writing to them that
they should bring the Megarian captives bound in their own fetters.
When they received these letters, they showed them privately to the
Megarians, persuading them to concur with them in a conspiracy to
procure the people’s liberty. A consult was held in common between them
about this matter, and they decided that the best way was to beat off
the rings from the fetters, and put them on the legs of the Megarians,
and fasten them with thongs to their girdles, that they might not
fall off nor being loose hinder them in their going. Accordingly they
accoutred the men in this manner, and giving each of them a scimitar,
they soon sailed back to Samos and landed, and accordingly led the
Megarians through the market-place to the council-house, where all
the Geomori were sitting together. Then, the sign being given, the
Megarians fell on and slew those men. Whereupon, the city being set at
liberty, they admitted the Megarians (as many as would) into the number
of citizens, and erecting a magnificent edifice, hung up the fetters
(πέδαι) in it. From this the house was named Πεδήτης.

_Question 58._ What is the reason that the chief priest of
Hercules in Antimachia at Cos, when he manageth the sacrifice, is
clothed in women’s apparel, and wears a mitre upon his head?

_Solution._ Hercules, setting sail from Troy with six ships,
was attacked by a storm, and lost all his ships but one, with which
only he was forced by the wind upon the coast of Cos, and fell upon a
place called Laceter, saving nothing besides his men and armor. There
happening to meet with a flock of sheep, he requested one ram of the
shepherd (the man was called Antagoras), who, being a robust-bodied
young man, challenged Hercules to fight with him; and if he were
worsted, Hercules should carry away the ram. As soon as this fellow
engaged with Hercules, the Meropes came in to the aid of Antagoras;
and the Grecians coming in to assist Hercules, a great fight ensued.
Whereat (they say) Hercules, overpowered by the multitude, betook
himself for refuge to a Thracian woman, and was concealed by disguising
himself in woman’s apparel. But when afterwards, conquering the Meropes
and passing under purification, he married the daughter of Alciopus, he
put on a flowery robe. Hence the priests offer sacrifices in the place
where the battle was fought, and the bridegrooms are clothed in women’s
apparel when they receive their brides.

_Question 59._ Whence was the race of Hamaxocylists in Megara?

_Solution._ In that licentious democracy under which the
demanding back of interest money paid to usurers[164] was introduced
and sacrilege was permitted, the Peloponnesians went on a pilgrimage
to Delphi through the borders of Megara, and lodged in Aegira by the
lake-side with their wives and children, in their caravans, as they
best could. There a resolute drunken company of the Megarians in a
riotous and cruel manner overturned their wagons, and overwhelmed
them in the lake; so that many of the pilgrims were drowned. The
Megarians indeed, by reason of the disorder of the government,
neglected the punishment of this wickedness; but the Amphictyons,
taking into consideration the sanctity of this pilgrimage, punished
the actors of this villany, some with banishment, some with death.
Hence the posterity of these villains were called Ἁμαξοκυλισταί, i.e.
_overturners of wagons_.

OF THE LOVE OF WEALTH.

1. Hippomachus, a master of the exercises, when some were commending
a tall man that had long hands as one that promised fair to be good
at fisticuffs, replied, A fit man indeed, if the victor’s laurel were
to be hanged up aloft, and should be his that could best reach it and
take it down. We may say the same to those that esteem so extravagantly
and repute it so great a felicity to possess fair fields, stately
mansion-houses, and a great deal of money lying by them,—that they
were in the right, if happiness were to be bought and sold. You may
see indeed many persons that choose rather to be rich and at the same
time very miserable, than to part with their money and become happy.
But, alas! indolency and repose of spirit, magnanimity, constancy,
resolution, and contentment of mind,—these are not a money-purchase.
Being wealthy is not despising wealth; nor is possessing things
superfluous the same as not needing things superfluous.

2. From what other evils then can riches free us, if they deliver us
not even from an inordinate desire of them? It is true, indeed, that by
drinking men allay their thirst after drink, and by eating they satisfy
their longings after food, and he that said,

Bestow a coat, of your good will,
On poor Hipponax cold and chill

if more clothes had been heaped on than he needed, would have thrown
them off, as being ill at ease. But the love of money is not abated by
having silver and gold; neither do covetous desires cease by possessing
still more. But one may say to wealth, as to an insolent quack,

Thy physic’s nought, and makes my illness worse.

When this distemper seizes a man that wants only bread and a house to
put his head in, ordinary raiment and such victuals as come first to
hand, it fills him with eager desires after gold and silver, ivory and
emeralds, hounds and horses; thus taking off the appetite, and carrying
it from things that are necessary after things that are troublesome and
unusual, hard to come by, and unprofitable when obtained. For no man is
poor as to what nature requires and what suffices it; no man takes up
money on use to buy meal or cheese, bread or olives; but you may see
one man run into debt for the purchase of a sumptuous house, another
for an adjoining olive-yard, another for corn-fields or vineyards,
another for Galatian mules, and another by a vain expense,

For horses fitly paired, with prancing feet
To draw the empty chariots through the street,[165]

has been plunged over head and ears into contracts and use-money, pawns
and mortgages. Moreover, as they that use to drink after they have
quenched their thirst, and to eat after their hunger is satisfied,
vomit up even what they took when they were athirst or hungry; so they
that covet things useless and superfluous, enjoy not even those that
are necessary. This is the character of these men.

3. As for those that spend nothing although they possess much, and yet
are always craving more, they may still more increase our wonder at
their folly, especially when one calls to mind that of Aristippus, who
was wont to say, that when a man eats and drinks liberally and yet is
never the nearer being filled, he presently goes to the physician and
enquires what is his disease and his indisposition and how he may get
rid of it; but if one that has five beds desires ten, and having ten
tables is for purchasing as many more, and having land and money in
good store is not at all filled, but still is bent, even breaking his
natural rest, upon getting more, and when he has never so much never
has enough, this man thinks he has no need of a physician to cure him
and to show him from what cause his distemper arises. Indeed, when a
man is athirst that hath not drunk at all, we expect that upon his
drinking his thirstiness should cease; but as for him that drinks and
drinks and so goes on without giving over, we do not think such a one
needs further repletion, but evacuation; and we advise him by all means
to vomit, as knowing that his trouble proceeds not from the want of any
thing, but from some sharp humor or preternatural heat that is within
him.

Among those persons, therefore, that are for increasing their substance
and getting more, he that is poor and indigent may perhaps give over
his cares when he has got a house or found a treasure, or, by a
friend’s help, has paid his debts and his creditors have discharged
him. But as for him that, having more than enough, yet still desires to
have more, it is not gold nor silver, not horses, sheep, or oxen, that
can cure him of this disease, but he needs evacuation and purgation.
For his distemper is not penury and want, but an insatiable desire
and thirst after riches, proceeding from a depraved and inconsiderate
judgment of things, which if it be not plucked out of men’s minds, like
a thing twisting across and contracting them, they will always be in
want of superfluities, that is, be craving things they have no need of.

4. When a physician visits a patient that has thrown himself upon his
bed and lies there groaning and refusing to eat, he feels his pulse and
asks him some questions; and finding that he is not at all feverish,
he tells him it is his mind that is distempered, and goes his way. When
we see therefore a man pining away for more means and sighing sadly
at any expenses, forbearing no sordid or painful course that brings
him gain, when yet he hath houses and lands, herds and slaves, and
clothes enough, what shall we call this man’s disease but poverty of
mind? For as for want of money, one friend, as Menander says, by being
a benefactor to him can cure it; but as to this other of the mind, all
a man’s friends, living or dead, cannot satisfy it. It was therefore a
good saying of Solon concerning such persons:

Those men that after wealth aspire
Set no fixed bounds to their desire.

To those indeed that are wise, the riches that Nature requires are
limited, and confined within the compass of their real needs, as within
a circle drawn from a centre at a certain distance.

There is also this particular mischief in the love of wealth, that this
desire hinders and opposes its own satisfaction, which other desires
do procure. For no man abstains from a good morsel because he loves
dainties, nor from wine because he thirsts after wine, as these men
abstain from using money because they love money. Does it not look
like madness and a piteous distemper, for a man not to make use of a
garment because he shakes with cold, to refuse to eat bread because he
is ready to famish with hunger, and not to use wealth because he is
greedy of getting it? This is the evil case that Thrasonides describes:
“I have such a thing within by me, I have it in my power, and I will
this thing (like those that are madly in love), but I do it not. When I
have locked and sealed up all, or have told out so much to the usurers
and tradesmen, I scrape together and hunt after more; I quarrel and
contend with the servants, the ploughmen and debtors. O Apollo, hast
thou ever seen a more wretched man, or any lover more miserable?”

5. Sophocles being asked by one whether he was able yet to company with
a woman; Heavens defend, said he, I have got my liberty, and by means
of my old age have escaped those mad and furious masters. For it is
very fit and becoming that, when our pleasures leave us, those desires
should do so too, which, as Alcaeus says,

’Twas never any man’s good hap
Nor woman’s wholly to escape.

But it is otherwise in the love of wealth, which, like a hard and
severe mistress, compels us to get what it forbids us to enjoy, and
excites an appetite but denies the pleasure of its gratification.
Stratonicus wittily abused the Rhodians for their profuseness, when
he said that they builded their houses as if they were immortal, but
provided for their tables as if they were to live but a little while.
So covetous men seem to be profuse by what they possess, when they
are sordid wretches if you consider what they use and enjoy; for they
endure labor, but taste no pleasure.

Demades once came to Phocion’s house and surprised him as he was at
dinner; and when he saw his frugal and slender diet, I much wonder,
Phocion, says he, that you should manage state affairs, and can dine as
you do. For this orator himself pleaded causes and harangued the people
only for his gut; and looking upon Athens as affording too little a
supply for his luxury, he fetched his provisions from Macedonia. For
which cause Antipater, seeing him when he was an old man, compared him
to a sacrifice when all was over and there remained nothing of the
beast but only the tongue and the stomach. But who would not wonder
at thee, O wretched man, who, being able to live as thou dost,—so
sordidly, so unlike a man, bestowing nothing on anybody, being currish
to thy friends, and without any ambition to serve the public,—yet
afflictest thyself and watchest whole nights, hirest out thy labors,
liest at catch for inheritances, crouchest to every one, when thou art
so well provided by thy sordid parsimony to live at ease?

It is reported of a certain Byzantine, that, surprising a whoremaster
with his wife that was very hard-favored, he cried out, O wretch,
what compelled thee to do this?—for her dowry is my solace. It is
necessary for kings, for procurators under them, for those that covet
pre-eminence and rule over cities, that they should heap up treasure;
they are forced through ambition, pride, and vain-glory to make feasts,
to gratify friends, to maintain a retinue, to send presents, to feed
armies, to purchase gladiators. But thou hast so much business lying
upon thy hand, tormentest thyself, tumblest up and down, and all this
while livest the life of a snail in thy shell through parsimony, and
endurest all hardships, receiving no advantage at all; just like the
bath-keeper’s ass, that carries the wood and fuel for the fires and
is always filled with the smoke and ashes of the stove, but itself is
neither bathed nor warmed, washed nor cleansed there.

6. I have said enough of this sort of covetousness, which makes a man
live the life of an ass or ant. But there is another sort of it which
is more savage, that calumniates and gets inheritance by bad arts, that
pries into other men’s affairs, that is full of thoughtfulness and
cares, counting how many of their friends are yet alive, and after all
enjoying nothing of what by all these arts has been heaped up.

As therefore we have a greater aversion and hatred against vipers,
poisonous flies, and spiders than against bears and lions, because
they kill and destroy men, but serve themselves no farther of their
carcasses, which they do not feed upon as those other wild beasts do;
so they that become bad and ill men through sordidness and parsimony
deserve more of our abhorrence than those that prove such by luxurious
living and excess, for they deprive others of what they are neither
able nor inclined to make use of themselves. Hence it is that the
luxurious, when they are rich and well provided, give some truce to
their debaucheries; as Demosthenes said to some that were of opinion
that Demades ceased to be an ill man. Now, says he, you see him full
and glutted, like lions, that then hunt not after prey. But as for the
others, who in the management of affairs propose no end to themselves
either of pleasure or profit, their covetous desires have no truce or
cessation, they being always empty and standing in need of all things.

7. But some perhaps may plead on their behalf, that these men keep and
hoard up their wealth for their children and heirs,—to whom they part
with nothing whilst they are alive; but, like those mice that live in
mines and pick up and eat the golden sands and ore, you cannot come by
any of that gold, till you anatomize them to find it after they are
dead. But to what end, I pray, would they leave such a deal of money
and a great estate to their children and heirs? That they forsooth may
preserve it also for others, and those others in like manner shall hand
it down to their children (just like those earthen pipes the potters
make for a water-course, which retain none of the water themselves,
but one pipe only conveys it to the next), till some informing false
accuser or tyrant appears and cuts off this keeper in trust, and when
his breath is stopped, derives and diverts the course of his wealth
into another channel; or, as they say, till some one that is the most
wicked of the race devours and consumes all that those who went before
him had preserved. For not only, as Euripides says,

Children from slaves derived and baser blood
Prove prodigal and lewd, none come to good;

but it is as true of the children of the parsimonious; as Diogenes
wittily abused this sort of men, when he said that it was better to
be a certain Megarian’s ram than his son. For, under the pretence of
training them up and instructing them, they undo and pervert them,
implanting in them their own love of money and meanness of spirit, and
erecting as it were a fortress for the securing their inheritance in
the minds of their heirs.

For the instructions and lessons they give them are such as these: Gain
as much and spend as little as may be; value yourself according to what
you are worth. But certainly this is not to instruct, but to contract
and sew them up, just like a purse, the better to conceal and keep what
is put into it. The purse indeed becomes foul and musty after money
is put up in it; but the children of the covetous, before they are
enriched by their parents, are replenished with covetous desires which
they derive from them. And indeed they pay them a deserved reward for
their instructions, not loving them because they shall receive a great
estate from them, but hating them because they have it not so soon as
they fain would. For being taught to admire nothing but wealth, nor
knowing any other end of living but to get a great estate, they account
the life of their parents to be a hindrance to that of their own, and
fancy so much time is taken from their own age as is added to theirs.
Wherefore, whilst their parents are yet living, they secretly always
steal their pleasures; and what they bestow upon their friends or spend
upon their lusts, and even what they give to their teachers, is fetched
as it were from another’s estate, not from their own.

But when their parents are dead and they are once possessed of their
keys and seals, then their way of living is of another fashion, and
they put on another face and aspect, grave, severe, and morose. You
hear no more of their former pastimes, nor of exercises with the ball
and in wrestling, nor of the Academy or the Lyceum; but they are
wholly taken up in examining the servants, looking over writings, in
debating matters with those that receive or owe them money. Their
hurry of business and thoughtfulness will not give them leave to
dine, and they are forced to make the night their time of bathing;
the gymnastic schools in which they were educated and the water of
Dirce are neglected. If any man ask him, Will you not go and hear the
philosopher? How can I, says he, now that my father is dead? I am not
at leisure. O miserable wretch! What has thy father left thee to be
compared with what he has taken from thee, thy leisure and thy liberty?
And yet it is not so much he that hath done it, as the wealth that
flows round thee and overpowers thee, which, like the women Hesiod
speaks of,

Thee without firebrands burns, and unawares
Resigns thee up to dotage and gray hairs,[166]

bringing on thy soul those cares—like untimely wrinkles and old
age—that spring from covetous desires and multiplicity of business,
that shrivel up all thy vigor and gayety, all sense of honor, all
kindness and humanity within thee.

8. But some will say, Do you not see rich men live splendidly and spend
high? To whom we answer: Dost thou not hear what Aristotle says, that
some there are that do not use wealth, and some that abuse it? For
neither sort do what is fit and becoming; but what the one sort possess
does neither advantage nor adorn them, and what the other sort have
does both hurt and dishonor them.

But let us further consider, What is the use of riches, for which men
so much admire them? Is it the enjoyment of what suffices nature? Alas!
in this respect the wealthy have no advantage of those that are of a
meaner fortune; but wealth (as Theophrastus says) is really no wealth
and need not be coveted, if Callias, the richest man of Athens, and
Ismenias, the wealthiest of Thebes, made use but of the same things
that Socrates and Epaminondas did. For as Agathon sent away the music
from the room where he feasted to the women’s apartment, contenting
himself with the discourses of his guests, so you would reject and
send away the purple beds and the high prized tables and all other
superfluous things, should you see that the rich make use of the same
things with the poor.

I do not mean thou shouldst presently

Hang up the rudder in the smoke at ease,
And let the mules’ and oxen’s labor cease;[167]

but much rather the impertinent labor of goldsmiths, turners,
perfumers, and cooks, when thou resolvest wisely and soberly to banish
all useless things.

But if the things that suffice nature lie in common among those
that have and those that want riches,—if rich men pride themselves
only in things superfluous, and thou art ready to praise Scopas of
Thessaly, who, when one begged somewhat of him he had in his house, as
a superfluous thing he had no use for, made answer, “But we rich men
count our felicity and happiness to lie in these superfluities, and not
in those necessary things,”—if your case be thus, have a care you do
not seem like one that magnifies and prefers a pomp and public show at
a festival before life itself.

Our country’s feast of Bacchus was in old time celebrated in a more
homely manner, though with great mirth and jollity. One carried in
procession a vessel of wine and a branch of a vine, afterwards followed
one leading a goat, another followed him bearing a basket of dried
figs, and after all came a phallus. But all these are now despised and
out of date, the procession being made with golden vessels and costly
garments, driving of chariots and persons in masquerade. And just thus
the things that are necessary and useful in riches are swallowed up by
those that are unprofitable and superfluous.

9. The most of us commit the mistake of Telemachus. For he through
inexperience, or rather want of good taste, when he saw Nestor’s house
furnished with beds and tables, garments and carpets, and well stored
with sweet and pleasant wine, did not look upon him as so happy a man
in being thus well provided with things necessary and useful; but when
he beheld the ivory, gold, and amber in Menelaus’s house, he cried out
in amazement:—

Such, and not nobler, in the realms above,
My wonder dictates is the dome of Jove.[168]

Whereas Socrates or Diogenes would have said rather:—

What vain, vexatious, useless things I’ve seen,
And good for nothing but to move one’s spleen.

Thou fool, what is it thou sayest? When thou oughtest to have stripped
thy wife of her purple and gaudy attire, that she might cease to live
luxuriously and to run mad after strangers and their fashions, instead
of this, dost thou adorn and beautify thy house, that it may appear
like a theatre or a stage to all comers?

10. The happiness riches pretend to is such that it depends upon
spectators and witnesses; else it would signify nothing at all. But it
is quite otherwise when we consider temperance or philosophy, or such
knowledge of the Gods as is requisite. For these, though unknown to all
other mortals, communicate a peculiar light and great splendor within
the soul, and cause a joy that dwells with it as an inmate, whilst it
enjoys the chiefest good, though neither Gods nor men may be privy to
it. Such a thing is truth, virtue, or the beauty of geometrical and
astrological sciences; and do riches, with their bravery and necklaces
and all that gaudery that pleases girls, deserve to be compared with
any of these? When nobody observes and looks on, riches are truly blind
and deprived of light. For if a rich man makes a meal with his wife or
familiars alone, he makes no stir about magnificent tables to eat on
or golden cups to drink in, but uses those that come next to hand; and
his wife, without any gold or purple to adorn her, presents herself in
a plain dress. But when he makes a feast,—that is, when the pomp and
theatre is to be fitted and prepared, and the scene of riches is to
enter,—

Then from the ships, with costly goods full fraught,
The trevets and the caldrons straight are brought;[169]

then they provide lamps, and much ado is made about the drinking-cups,
they put the cup-bearers into a new dress, they bring forth whatever
is made of gold and silver or set with precious stones, thus plainly
declaring that they would be looked upon by all for rich men. But even
though he should eat his meal alone, he wants hilarity of mind and that
contentment which alone makes a feast.

HOW A MAN MAY INOFFENSIVELY PRAISE HIMSELF WITHOUT BEING LIABLE TO ENVY.

1. He that talks big and arrogantly of himself, Herculanus, is
universally condemned as a troublesome and ill-bred companion. But the
most, even of those who in words mightily declaim against him, seem to
applaud him in their actions. Euripides could say,

If speech grew scarce, and at great rates were sold,
Commend himself what lavish fellow would?
But since the infinite treasure of the air
Praise gratis yields, none truth or falsehood spare;
Suffering no damage, though they give their ware.

Yet he often brings in his heroes intolerably boasting, and stuffs
their most tragical adventures and passions with improper discourses of
themselves. So Pindar declares,

Unseasonably to glory
Makes harmony with fury;[170]

but he forbears not to extol his own raptures, which indeed, by the
confession of all men, are worthy of the noblest praise.

But those who are crowned for mastery in the games or in the learned
combats have others to celebrate their victories, that the people’s
ears be not grated with the harsh noises of self-applause. And
Timotheus is justly censured as unskilfully and irregularly setting
forth his conquest of Phrynis, when he thus proudly boasted it in
writing: Happy man wast thou, Timotheus, when the crier proclaimed,
‘The Milesian Timotheus hath vanquished the son of Carbo, the soft
Ionian poet.’

It is true then, as Xenophon says, The most pleasant sound that a man
can hear is his own praise in another’s mouth; but the most odious
thing unto others is a man commending himself. For we brand them as
impudent who commend themselves, it becoming them to be modest though
they were praised by others; and we account them unjust in arrogating
that to themselves which another has the sole propriety of bestowing on
them. Besides, if we then are silent, we seem either angry or envious;
but if we second their discourse, we are presently entangled and forced
to contribute more than we intended, speaking to men’s faces what
sounds well only behind their backs; and so we undertake rather the
base work of drudging flattery than any real offices of true honor.

2. Yet, however, there is a time when a statesman may be the subject of
his own discourse, and give a free relation of things he has worthily
done or said, as well as other truths; taking care that it be not
merely for favor or reputation, but upon some emergent occasion, and
especially, when the deeds achieved by him or the parts that be in
him be good and honest, then he is not to forbear and say merely that
he hath done so or else much like. There is indeed a praise of this
kind which bears very excellent and lovely fruit, from whose seeds
arise many of the same species very much meliorated and improved. And
therefore it is that the wise statesman seeks glory not as the reward
or solace of his virtue, nor embraces it merely as the companion of his
achievements, but because the being accounted an honorable person and
gallant man affords a thousand opportunities of compassing many and
more desirable things. For it is easy and delightful to be of use to
those who are apt to believe and love us; whereas, if a man lie under
calumnies and suspicions, he cannot exert his virtue to the benefit of
others without committing a kind of violence upon them.

There may also be more reasons than these, which we must enquire into,
that, while we endeavor to avert a frivolous and nauseous applauding of
ourselves, we chance not to omit that sort which may be truly useful.

3. The praise therefore is vain which a man heaps on himself to provoke
others also to praise him, and is chiefly contemptible, as proceeding
from an importunate and unseasonable affectation of esteem.

For as they who are ready to die for food are compelled against nature
to gnaw off their own flesh, and thus put a miserable end to their
famine; so they who mortally hunger after praise, unless some one
afford them a little scantling alms of commendation, do violate the
laws of decency, shamelessly endeavoring to supply those wants by an
unnatural extolling of themselves.

But when they do not on the bare consideration of themselves hunt
applause, but strive to obscure the worth of others, by fighting
against their praises and opposing their own works and practices to
theirs, they add to their vanity an envious and abhorred baseness. He
who thrusts his foot into another’s dance is stigmatized with a proverb
as a ridiculous and pragmatical clown; but upon envy and jealousy to
thrust ourselves between the praises of others, or to interrupt the
same with our own self praise, is a thing that we ought equally to
beware of. Neither should we allow others to praise us at such a time,
but frankly yield the honor to those who are then celebrated, if their
merit be real; and though the persons be vicious or unworthy, yet must
we not take from them by setting up ourselves; but rather on the other
hand we must reprove the unskilful applauders, and demonstrate their
encomiums to be improperly and dangerously conferred. It is plain that
these errors must be avoided.

4. But self-praise is not liable to disgrace or blame when it is
delicately handled by way of apology to remove a calumny or accusation.
Thus Pericles: But ye are angry at me, a man inferior to none, whether
it be in the understanding or interpreting of necessary things;
a man who am a lover of my country, and above the meannesses of
bribes. For, in speaking with this gallantry of himself, he was not
only free from arrogance, vanity, and ambition, but he demonstrated
the greatness and spirit of that virtue which could not be dejected
itself, and even humbled and tamed the haughtiness of envy. Such men
as these will hardly be condemned; but those who would vote against
them are won over to their cause, do receive infinite satisfaction,
and are agreeably inspirited with this noble boasting, especially
if that bravery be steady, and the ground firm on which it stands.
This history does frequently discover. For, when the Theban generals
accused Pelopidas and Epaminondas that, the time for their office as
Boeotarchs being expired, they did not forthwith give up their power,
but made an incursion into Laconia and repaired and re-peopled Messene,
Pelopidas, submitting himself and making many lowly entreaties, very
hardly obtained his absolution; but Epaminondas loftily glorying in
those actions, and at last declaring he would willingly be put to
death so that they would set up his accusation, “Epaminondas hath
wasted Laconia, hath settled Messene, and happily united Arcadia into
one state, against our will,” they admired him, and the citizens,
wondering at the cheerful greatness of his courage, dismissed him with
unspeakable pleasantness and satisfaction.

Therefore, when Agamemnon thus reproached Diomedes,

O son of Tydeus!—he whose strength could tame
The bounding steeds, in arms a mighty name,—
Canst thou remote the mingling hosts descry,
With hands inactive and a careless eye?

Sthenelus is not to be much condemned for saying,

Ourselves much greater than our ancestors
We boast;[171]

for Sthenelus had not been calumniated himself, but he only patronized
his abused friend; and so the cause excused that freedom of speech,
which seemed otherwise to have something of the glorioso.

But Cicero’s magnifying his diligence and prudence in Catiline’s trial
was not very pleasing to the Romans; yet when Scipio said, they ought
not to judge Scipio, who had enstated them in the power of judging all
men, they ascended crowned to the Capitol, and sacrificed with him. For
Cicero was not necessitated to this, but merely spurred by the desire
of glory; while the danger wherein Scipio stood delivered him from envy.

5. Now talking after an high and glorious manner proves advantageous,
not only to persons in danger of the law or such like eminent distress,
but to those also who are clouded in a dull series of misfortunes; and
that more properly than when they appear splendid in the world. For
what addition can words make to those who already seem possessed of
real glory, and do lie indulging and basking in her beams? But those
who at present are incapable of ambition, if they express themselves
loftily, seem only to bear up against the storms of Fortune, to
undergird the greatness of their souls, and to shun that pity and
commiseration which supposes a shipwrecked and forlorn condition.
As therefore those who in walking affect a stiffness of body and a
stretched-out neck are accounted effeminate and foppish, but are
commended if in fencing and fighting they keep themselves erect and
steady; so the man grappling with ill fortune, if he raise himself to
resist her,

Like some stout boxer, ready with his blow,[172]

and by a bravery of speech transform himself from abject and miserable
to bold and noble, is not to be censured as obstinate and audacious,
but honored as invincible and great. So, although Homer described
Patroclus in the happinesses of his life as smooth and without envy,
yet in death he makes him have something of the bravo, and a soldier’s
gallant roughness:

Had twenty mortals, each thy match in might,
Opposed me fairly, they had sunk in fight.[173]

So Phocion, though otherwise very mild, after the sentence passed on
him, showed the greatness of his mind in many respects; particularly
to one of his fellow-sufferers, who miserably cried out and bewailed
his misfortune, What, says he, is it not a pleasure to thee to die with
Phocion?

6. Further, a man of state has not less but greater liberty to speak
any thing of himself when his merits are rewarded with injurious and
unkind returns. Achilles usually gave the Gods their glory, and spoke
modestly in this manner:

Whene’er, by Jove’s decree, our conquering powers
Shall humble to the dust Troy’s lofty towers.

But when he was unhandsomely reproached and aspersed with contumelies,
he added swelling words to his anger, and these in his own applause:

I sacked twelve ample cities on the main;

and also these:

It was not thus, when, at my sight amazed,
Troy saw and trembled, as this helmet blazed.[174]

For apologies claim a great liberty of speech and boasting, as
considerable parts of their defence.

Themistocles also, having been guilty of nothing distasteful either in
his words or actions, yet perceiving the Athenians glutted with him and
beginning to neglect him, forbore not to say: Why, O ye happy people,
do ye weary out yourselves by still receiving benefits from the same
hands? Upon every storm you fly to the same tree for shelter; yet, when
it is fair again, you despoil it of its leaves as you go away.

7. They therefore who are injured usually recount their good actions to
the ingrate. And, if they also praise those excellences which others
are pleased to condemn, they are not only pardonable but altogether
without blame. For it is evident they do not reproach others, but
apologize for themselves.

This gave Demosthenes a glorious freedom, yet allayed the offensive
brightness of his own praises, which almost everywhere shine through
his whole Oration on the Crown, in which he extols those embassies and
decrees which were so much objected against him.

8. Not much unlike this is the insinuating delicacy of an antithesis,
when a person, being accused for any thing as a crime, demonstrates its
opposite to be base and vicious. So Lycurgus, being upbraided by the
Athenians for stopping a sycophant’s mouth with money, said: And what
kind of citizen do you then take me to be, who, having so long managed
the affairs of the republic amongst you, am at last found rather to
have given than to have received money unjustly? And Cicero, Metellus
objecting he had cast more by his evidence against them than ever he
had acquitted by his pleading for them, replies: Who therefore will not
freely declare that Cicero has more honesty and faith than eloquence?
Many expressions of this nature are in Demosthenes; particularly,
But who might not justly have slain me, if I had endeavored in word
only to sully the honors and glorious titles which the city hath? Or,
What, think you, would those vile fellows have said, if, whilst I had
been curiously poring on other things, the cities had rejected our
alliance?[175] And all his forementioned oration ingeniously dresses
these antitheses and solutions of cases with the subtle ornaments of
his own praise.

9. But this may very profitably be learned therein, that, delicately
tempering the encomiums of his auditors with the things relating to
himself, he secures himself from being liable to envy, nor becomes
suspected of self-love. There he relates in what manner the Athenians
behaved themselves to the Euboeans, in what manner to the Thebans, and
what benefits they conferred upon those of Byzantium and Chersonesus;
in all which he confesses his part was only that of their minister or
steward. Thus by a rhetorical deceit, he finely and insensibly instils
his own praises into his hearers, who pleasingly hang upon his words,
and rejoice at the commemoration of those worthy deeds. Now this joy is
immediately seconded by admiration, and admiration is succeeded by a
liking and love of that person who so wisely administered the affairs.
This Epaminondas seems to have considered, when reviled by Meneclidas,
as though he had an higher opinion of himself than ever Agamemnon had.
If it be so, says he, Thebans, ’tis you have puffed me up; you, by
whose help alone I overthrew the Lacedaemonian empire in one day.

10. But since for the most part men are exceedingly displeased with
those who are the trumpeters of their own fame, but if they sound
forth another’s, are delighted and give them cheerful acclamations;
it is hence grown a frequent custom amongst orators, by a seasonable
extolling those who have like purposes, actions, and manner of life
with theirs, to assure and wheedle over the auditory to themselves.
For the hearers know that, though the panegyrist solemnizes another’s
worth, he has yet the same endowments of virtue, so that his encomiums
will redound to himself. For as he who reproaches any man for faults
of which he himself is guilty cannot but perceive he principally
upbraids himself, so the virtuous, by giving applauses to the virtuous,
offer their own praises to the apprehensive, who will presently cry
out, And are not you one of these? Therefore Alexander honoring
Hercules, and Androcottus again honoring Alexander, in effect proposed
themselves to be in like manner honored by others. So Dionysius
scoffing Gelon, and calling him the Gelos (or laughing-stock) of
Sicily, was not aware that through envy he had happened to infringe the
greatness of his own authority and power.

11. These things the man of state must know and observe. Now those
who are forced upon their own praises are the more excusable, if they
arrogate not the causes wholly to themselves, but ascribe them in part
to Fortune and in part to God. Achilles therefore said:

Since now at length the powerful will of heaven
The dire destroyer to our arm has given.[176]

And Timoleon did well, who erected a fane to Fortune, and dedicated
his house to the Good Genius, to whom he referred the felicity of his
attempts. But best of all, Python of Aenos, after he had slain Cotys,
coming to Athens and perceiving the orators very busy in applauding
him to the people, which displeased many and stirred them up to envy,
thus speaks: These things, ye Athenians, some of the Gods have done;
our hands were only the instruments of their work. Sylla also prevented
envy by perpetually praising Fortune, not his own prowess; and at last
surnamed himself Epaphroditus, in acknowledgment that his success
proceeded from the care of Venus. For men will more readily impute a
defeat to chance or the pleasure of some God than to the virtue of
the conqueror; for the one they think to be a good not pertinent to
the conqueror, but the other to be a proper defect of their own,
which proceedeth from themselves. The laws therefore of Zaleucus were
received by the Locrians with the more willingness and delight, because
he had told them Minerva constantly appeared to him and dictated and
instructed him in those laws, and that they were none of them his own
inventions.

12. This kind of excuses may be framed as convenient remedies or
preventions when we have to do with persons of a difficult or
envious humor. But it is not amiss to use some little revocations
or corrections of what may seem spoken to our praise, before those
who are of a sedate and composed temper. If any commend us as those
who have learning, riches, or authority, we should hinder them from
choosing such topics, and rather desire of them, if they can, to
take notice of us as innocent, good, and useful. Thus we do not so
much confer as transfer praises, and seem not to be puffed up with
our applauders, but rather to be offended that they have not praised
conveniently and for truly meritorious things. We hide also inferior
with better qualifications; yet not as desiring to be commended, but
as teaching to commend aright. Such forms as these may be referred
hither: It is true, I have not walled the city with stones or brick;
but if you will view my fortifications, you shall find armor, and
horses, and confederates.[177] But more apt is that of Pericles. When
his friends bewailed him in the extremities of death, they put him
in mind of his authority and the great offices he had discharged, as
also what victories, trophies, and cities he had left the Athenians;
but he, raising himself a little, reproved them as fixing only upon
common encomiums, and enlarging rather on those of fortune than on
those of virtue, whereas they neglected the greatest matter, which was
more peculiar to himself,—that he had never been the occasion of any
Athenian’s wearing black. And hence the orator may learn, if he be a
good man, to transfer the eulogiums of his eloquence to his virtuous
life and manners; and the commander who is admired and applauded for
his conduct and happy fortune in the wars may freely propose his
clemency or justice as more worthy to be praised. Nay, further, it
becomes even an emperor, upon a profusion of such glutting praises as
flatterers are commonly guilty of, to say something of this nature:

No God am I. Why do ye equal me
Thus to th’ immortal powers.[178]

If you know me well, let my justice or temperance, my equanimity or
humanity, be rather spoken of. For even envy herself can easily concede
the lesser honors to him who refuses the greater; nor will it rob
any of true encomiums, not to expect false and vain ones. Therefore
several princes, who permitted not themselves to be called Gods or
the offspring of the Gods, have yet assumed the titles Philadelphus,
Philometor, Evergetes, or Theophilus; and were never offended when they
were honored with those glorious yet human appellations.

Again, they who in their writings and sayings are absolute votaries
to wisdom by no means will be called σοφοί (or wise men), but can
presently swallow the epithet of philosophers (or lovers of wisdom), or
that of proficients, or any other easy name which sounds not big nor
exposes them to envy; and so they beget and preserve a good esteem. But
your rhetorical sophisters, whilst in their orations they gape for the
extraordinary acclamations of divine, angelical, wonderful, lose even
those common ones of manly or pretty well.

13. Now as skilful painters, that they may not offend those that have
weak eyes, allay their over-bright and gaudy colors by tempering
them with darker; so there are some who will not represent their own
praises altogether glaring and immoderately splendid, but cast in
some defects, some scapes or slight faults, to take away the danger of
displeasure or envy. Epeus intolerably brags of his skill in boxing.

I’ll crush my adversary’s body, break his bones;

yet he would seem to qualify all with this,

Is’t not enough that I’m in fight unskilled?[179]

But, to say truth, to excuse his arrogance with so base a confession is
ridiculous. He then who would be an exact man corrects himself for his
forgetfulness, ignorance, ambition, or eagerness for certain knowledge
and discourses. So does Ulysses when he says of the Sirens,

Thus the sweet charmers warbled o’er the main,
My soul takes wing to meet the heavenly strain;
I give the sign, and struggle to be free;

and again, when he sang of his visit to the Cyclops,

Their wholesome counsel rashly I declined,
Curious to view the man of monstrous kind,
And try what social rites a savage lends.[180]

And for the most part it is a good antidote against envy, to mix
amongst our praises those faults that are not altogether ungenerous and
base. Therefore many temper them not only with confessions of poverty
or unskilfulness, but even of vile descent. So Agathocles, carousing
amongst the Sicilian youth in golden bowls very curiously wrought,
commanded earthen pots to be brought in. See (says he) what diligence,
laboriousness, and fortitude can do! Once we made muggen jugs, but now
vessels of gold. For his original was so mean and contemptible, that
it was thought he had served in a potter’s shop who at last governed
almost all Sicily.

14. These are the outward preventions or remedies against diseases
that may arise from the speaking of one’s self. There are some others
inward, which Cato has recourse to when he tells us he was envied for
neglecting his domestic affairs and being vigilant whole nights in
those of his country. So with this:

How shall I boast, who grew so easily,
Though mustered ’mongst the common soldiery;
Great in my fortune as the bravest be?

And this:

But I am loath to lose past labor’s gains;
Nor will retreat from a fresh troop of pains.[181]

For as they who obtain great possessions of houses or lands gratis and
with little difficulty are under the eye of envy, but not if their
purchases were troublesome and dear, so it is with them who arrive at
honor and applause.

15. Well then, since it is evident we may praise ourselves not only
inoffensively and without being liable to envy, but with great
advantage too; that we may seem not to do this for itself, but for a
further and better end, first consider whether it may prove for the
instruction of the company, by exciting them to a virtuous emulation.
For so Nestor’s relation of his own achievements inflamed Patroclus
and nine others with a vehement desire of single combat; and we know
the counsel that brings persuasive deeds as well as words, a lively
exemplar, and an immediate familiar incentive, insouls a man with
courage, moves, yea, vehemently spurs him up to such a resolution of
mind as cannot doubt the possibility and success of the attempt. This
was the reason of that chorus in Lacedaemon consisting of boys, young
men, and old men, which thus sang in parts:—

Old Men. Once we were young, and bold and strong.

Boys. And we shall be no less ere long.

Young Men. We now are such; behold us, if you will.[182]

Well and politicly in this public entertainment did the legislator
propose to the youth obvious and domestic examples of such as had
already performed the things he exhorted them to.

16. Moreover, it is not only available for the exciting of a generous
emulation, but sometimes requisite for the silencing and taming an
insolent and audacious man, to talk a little gloriously of one’s self.
As Nestor in this:

I have conversed with men more gallant far
Than you; much your superiors they in all things were,
Nor did they ever to contemn me dare.[183]

And Aristotle writes to Alexander, that not only those who have mighty
empires may think highly of themselves, but they also who have worthy
thoughts and notions of the Gods. Such a remark as this is also
profitable against enemies, and recalls the spirits:

Weak sons of misery our strength oppose.[184]

And such a reflection as that of Agesilaus, who said concerning
the king of Persia, when he heard him called the Great: And who is
greater than I, unless he be more just? So Epaminondas answered the
Lacedaemonians, when they had spun out a long accusation against the
Thebans: I see then we have forced you out of your wonted humor of
short speech.

The like to these are proper against adversaries; but amongst our
friends and fellow-citizens a seasonable glorying is good not only to
humble and throw down their haughtiness, but if they be fearful or
astonished, to fetch back their courage and teach them to rally up
themselves again. Therefore Cyrus in perils and battles talked at a
thundering rate, but otherwise was mild and gentle in discourse. And
Antigonus the Second generally was modest and free from blustering; but
at the sea-fight at Cos,—one of his friends saying, See you not how
much greater the number of the enemy’s ships is than ours?—he answers,
And for how many ships dost thou reckon me?

This Homer seems to have considered, who makes Ulysses, when his
friends were dismayed at the noise and horrible waves of Charybdis,
immind them of his former stratagems and valor:

O friends! O often tried in adverse storms!
With ills familiar in more dreadful forms!
Deep in the dire Cyclopean den you lay,
Yet safe return’d,—Ulysses led the way.[185]

For this kind of praise is not such as the haranguers to the people
or sophistical beggars use, nor those who affect popular humming and
applause; but a necessary pledge of that courage and conduct which
must be given to hearten up our friends. For we know that opinion
and confidence in him whom we esteem endued with the fortitude and
experience of a complete captain is, in the crisis of a battle, no
small advantage to the obtaining of the day.

17. We have before declared the opposing of himself to the reputation
and credit of another to be altogether unbefitting a worthy man; but
where a vicious praise becomes hurtful and corruptive, creating an
earnestness after evil things or an evil purpose in great matters,
it is not unprofitable to refuse it; but it becomes us to direct the
minds of the company towards better sentiments of things, showing them
the difference. For certainly any one will be pleased when he sees
many voluntarily abstaining from the vices they heard cried down and
reproved; but if baseness be well accounted of, and honor be made to
attend on him who pursues pleasure or avarice, where is the nature so
happily strong that can resist, much less conquer, the temptation?
Therefore a generous and discreet person must set himself against
the praises, not of evil men, but of evil actions; for this kind of
commendation perverts the judgments of men, and miserably leads them
to imitate and emulate unworthy practices as laudable. But they may
be easily bewrayed by confronting them with opposite truths. Theodorus
the tragedian is reported to have said to Satyrus the comedian, It is
not so wonderful an art to move the theatre’s laughter as to force its
tears. But if some philosopher should have retorted, Aye; but, friend,
it is not so fit and seemly to make men weep, as to remove and free
them from their sorrows, it is likely by this odd way of commending
himself he would have delighted his hearer, and endeavored to alter
or secure his judgment. So Zeno knew how to speak for himself, when
the great number of Theophrastus’s scholars was opposed to the fewness
of his, saying, His chorus is indeed greater than mine, but mine is
sweeter. And Phocion, while Leosthenes yet prospered, being asked by
the orators what good he had done the city, replies: Nothing but this,
that in my government of you there have been no funeral orations, but
all the deceased were buried in the sepulchres of their ancestors. So
Crates, by way of antithesis to this epitaph of the glutton,

What I have eat is mine; in words my will
I’ve had, and of my lust have took my fill,

well opposes these,

What I have learnt is mine; I’ve had my thought,
And me the Muses noble truths have taught.

This kind of praise is amiable and advantageous, teaching to admire and
love convenient and profitable things instead of the superfluous and
vain. Thus much for the stating of the question, in what cases and how
far self-praise may be inoffensive.

18. Now the order of the discourse requires to show how an uncomely and
unseasonable affectation of praise may be avoided. Discourse of a man’s
self usually sallies from self-love, as from its fort, and is there
observed to lay wait, even in those who are vulgarly thought free
enough from ambition. Therefore, as it is one of the rules of health to
avoid dangerous and unwholesome places, or being in them to take the
greater care, so ought there to be a like rule concerning converse and
speaking of one’s self. For this kind of talk has slippery occasions,
into which we unawares and indiscernibly are apt to fall.

For first (as is above said), ambition usually intrudes into the
praises of others with some flourishing remarks to adorn herself. For
let a person be commended by his equal or inferior, the mind of the
ambitious is tickled and rubbed at the hearing of his praise, and
immediately he is hurried by an intemperate desire and precipitation
after the like; as the appetite of the hungry is sharpened by seeing
others eat.

19. In the second place, the story of men’s prosperous actions
naturally carries them into the humor of boasting; and joy so far
transports them, that they swell with their own words when they would
give you a relation of their victories or their success in the business
of the state, or of their other publicly applauded actions or orations,
and find it difficult to contain themselves and preserve a mean. In
which kind of error it is observable that soldiers and mariners are
most entangled. Nor is it infrequent with those who return from the
government of provinces and the management of great affairs. Such as
these, when mention is once made of illustrious and royal personages,
presently thrust in some eulogies of themselves, as proceeding from
the favor and kind opinion of those princes: and then they fancy they
seem not at all to have praised themselves, but to have given only a
bare account what great men have said honorably of them. So another
sort, little different from these, think they are not discerned when
they tell you all the familiarities of kings and emperors with them and
their particular applying themselves to them in discourse, and appear
to recount them, not as thereby intending their own honor, but as
bringing in considerable evidences of singular affability and humanity
in persons so exceeding great.

We see then what reason we have to look narrowly to ourselves, that,
whilst we confer praises on others, we give no ground for suspicion
that we make them but the vehicles of our own, and that, “in pretending
to celebrate Patroclus,” under his name we mean romantically ourselves.

20. Further, that kind of discourse which consists in dispraising and
finding fault is dangerous, and yields opportunity to those that watch
it for the magnifying their own little worth. Of this old men are
inclinable to be guilty, when, by chastising and debasing others for
their vices, they exalt themselves as wonderfully great in the opposite
virtues. Indeed to these there must be a very large concession, if
they be reverend not only in age, but in virtue and place; for it is
not altogether an unprofitable way, since it may sometimes create an
extraordinary zeal and emulation of honor in those who are thus spurred
up. But otherwise that sort of humor is carefully to be shunned; for
reproof is often bitter, and wants a great deal of caution to sweeten
and correct it. Now this is not done by the tempering our own praises
with the reprehension of another; for he is an unworthy and odious
fellow who seeks his own credit through any man’s disgrace, basely
endeavoring to build a slight reputation of his virtue upon the
discovery of another’s crimes.

21. Lastly, as they who are naturally inclined to a dangerous sort of
laughter,—which is a kind of violent passion or disease,—must preserve
especially the smooth parts of the body from tickling incentives, which
cause these parts to yield and relent, thus provoking the passion; so
they whose minds are soft and propense to the desires of reputation
must carefully beware that they be not precipitated by the ticklings
of another’s praises into a vaporing of themselves. They ought rather
to blush, if they hear themselves commended, and not put on a brazen
face. They ought modestly and handsomely to reprove their applauders as
having honored them too much, and not chide them for having been too
sparing in their praise. Yet in this many offend, putting those who
speak advantageously of them in mind of more things of the same nature;
endeavoring to make a huge heap of creditable actions, till by what
they themselves add they spoil all that their friends have conferred to
the promoting their esteem.

Some there are who flatter themselves, till they are stupidly puffed
up; others allure a man to talk of himself, and take him by casting
some little gilded temptation in his way; and another sort for a little
sport will be putting questions, as those in Menander to the silly
braggadocio soldier:

How did you get this wound?
By a furious dart.
For heaven’s sake, how?
As from my scaling ladder
I mounted the proud walls. See here! Behold!
Then I proceed to show my wound
With earnest look; but they spoiled all with laughter.

22. We must be watchful in all these cases, that we neither of
ourselves drop into our own inconvenient praises, nor be hooked into
them by others. Now the best and most certain way of security is to
look back upon such as we can remember guilty of this fault, and to
consider how absurd and ugly it is accounted by all men, and that
hardly any thing is in converse a greater disturbance than this.

Hence it is that, though there be no other quality in such persons
unpleasing, yet, as if Nature had taught us to abhor and fly it, we
hasten out to get a little fresh air; and even the very parasite and
indigent flatterers are uneasy, when the wealthy and great men by whose
scraps they live begin to admire and extol themselves; nay, they give
out that they pay the greatest portion of the shot, when they must give
ear to such vanities. Therefore he in Menander cries out,

They kill me—I am a macerated guest—
With their wise sayings and their soldier’s brags;
How base these gloriosos are!

But these faults are not only to be objected against common soldiers
and upstarts who detain others with gaudy and proud relations of their
own actions, but also against sophists, philosophers, and commanders
who grow full of themselves and talk at a fastuous rate. Therefore it
is fit we still remember that another’s dispraise always accompanies
the indiscreet praises of ourselves; that the end of vain-glory is
disgrace; and that, as Demosthenes tells us, the company will both be
offended and judge otherwise of us than we would have them.[186] Let
us then forbear to talk of ourselves, unless the profit that we or our
hearers may thence probably reap be considerably great.

CONCERNING THE PROCREATION OF THE SOUL AS DISCOURSED IN TIMAEUS.[187]

THE FATHER TO AUTOBULUS AND PLUTARCH WISHETH HEALTH.

1. Since it is your opinion that it would be requisite for me to
collect together what I have discoursed and written dispersedly in
several treatises explaining, as we apprehended his sense and meaning,
what opinion Plato had concerning the soul, as requiring a particular
commentary by itself; therefore I have compiled this discourse,
which asks for your consideration and pardon not only because the
matter itself is by no means easy to be handled, but also because the
doctrines herein contained are somewhat contrary to those held by most
of the Platonic philosophers. And I will first rehearse the words as
they run originally in the text itself of Timaeus.[188]

“There being one substance not admitting of division, but continuing
still the same, and another liable to be divided among several bodies,
out of both these he produced for a middle mixture a third sort of
Substance, partaking of the nature of the Same and of the nature of the
Other, and placed it in the midst between that which was indivisible
and that which was subject to be corporeally divided. Then taking all
three, he blended them into one form, forcibly adapting to the Same
the nature of the Other, not readily condescending to a mixture. Now
when he had thus mixed them with the Substance, and reduced the three
into one, he again divided this whole matter into so many parts as were
thought to be necessary; every one of these parts being composed of the
Same, the Other, and the Substance. And thus he began his division.”

By the way, it would be an endless toil to recite the contentions and
disputes that have from hence arisen among his interpreters, and to you
indeed superfluous, who are not ignorant yourselves of the greatest
part.

But seeing that Xenocrates won to his opinions several of the most
eminent philosophers, while he defined the substance of the soul to be
number moved by itself; and that many adhered to Crantor the Solian,
who affirmed the soul to consist partly of an essence perceptible to
the mind, partly of a nature concerned with sensible things and subject
to opinions; I am apt to believe that the perspicuity of these matters
clearly dilucidated will afford you a fair entrance into the knowledge
of the rest.

2. Nor does either of the two conjectures require many words of
explanation. For the one side pretends that by the mixture of the
divisible and indivisible substance no other thing is meant than the
generation or original of number, seeing that the unit is undividable
but multitude is subject to division; however, that out of these is
begot number, unity terminating plurality and putting a period to
infinity, which they call the unlimited binary. This binary Zaratas,
the scholar of Pythagoras, named the mother, but the unit the father
of number; and therefore he believed those numbers were the best which
approached nearest in resemblance to the unit. Nevertheless, this
number cannot be said to be the soul; for it neither has the power
to move, neither can it be moved. But the Same and the Other being
blended together, of which one is the original of motion and mutation,
the other of rest and stability, from these two springs the soul, which
is no less active or passive itself to stay or to be stayed, than to
move or to be moved.

But the followers of Crantor, supposing the proper function of the
soul to consist in judging of those things which are discernible to
the understanding and those which are liable to sense, as also of the
differences and similitudes of these things, as well in themselves as
in reference one to another, allege the soul to be composed of all,
to the end she may have a true knowledge of the whole. Now the things
of which the All is composed are fourfold,—the intelligible nature,
always immutable and still the same, and the sensitive nature, which
is passive and subject to alteration; and also the nature of the Same,
and the nature of the Other, in regard the two former in some measure
participate also of diversity and identity.

3. All these philosophers likewise equally hold that the soul neither
derives its beginning from time nor is the product of generation, but
that it is endued with several faculties and virtues, into which Plato,
as it were, melting and dissolving its substance for contemplation’s
sake, supposes it in his discourse to have had its original from
procreation and mixture.

The same was his opinion concerning the world; for he knew it to be
uncreated and without end, but not perceiving it so easy to apprehend
how the structure was reared, or by what order and government
supported, unless by admitting its beginning and the causes thereto
concurring, he followed that method to instruct himself. These things
being thus generally by them laid down, Eudorus will allow to neither
side any share of probability; and indeed to me they both seem to have
wandered from the opinion of Plato, if we intend to make the most
likely rule our guide,—which is not to advance our own conceits,
but to come as close as we can to his sense and meaning. Now as to
this same mixture (as they call it) of the intelligible and sensitive
substance, no reason appears why it should be more the original of the
soul than of any other thing that ye can name. For the whole world
itself and every one of its parts pretend to no other composition
than of a sensitive and an intelligible substance, of which the one
affords matter and foundation, the other form and figure to the whole
mass. And then again, whate’er there is of material substance, framed
and structured by participation and assimilation of the intelligible
nature is not only to be felt but visible to the eye; whenas the soul
still soars above the reach of all natural apprehension. Neither did
Plato ever assert the soul to be number, but a perpetually self-moving
nature, the fountain and principle of motion. Only he embellished and
adorned the substance of it with number, proportion, and harmony;
as being a subject capable of receiving the most goodly form which
those ornaments could produce. So that I cannot believe it to be the
same thing to compose the soul according to number, and to affirm the
soul to be number itself. Nor can it be said to be harmony because
harmoniously composed, as he has clearly demonstrated in his Treatise
of the Soul. But plain it is, that those philosophers understood not
the meaning of the Same and the Other. For they tell us how the Same
contributes rest, the Other motion toward the generation of the soul.
Though Plato himself, in his treatise entitled the Sophist, disposes
and distinguishes Essence, the Same, the Other, together with Motion
and Rest, as being five things altogether differing one from another
and void of mutual affinity.

4. But these men are generally, as the most part of Plato’s readers,
timorous and vainly perplexed, using all their endeavors by wresting
and tormenting his sense to conceal and hide what he has written,
as if it were some terrible novelty not fit for public view, that
the world and the soul neither had their beginning and composition
from eternity, nor had their essence from a boundless immensity of
time,—of which we have particularly spoken already. So that now it
shall suffice to say no more than this, that these writers confound and
smother (if they do not rather utterly abolish) his eager contest and
dispute in behalf of the Gods, wherein Plato confesses himself to have
been transported with an ambitious zeal, even beyond the strength of
his years, against the atheists of his time. For if the world had no
beginning, Plato’s opinion vanishes,—that the soul, much elder than the
body, is the principle of all motion and alteration, or (to use his own
words) their chieftain and first efficient cause, whose mansion is in
Nature’s secret retirements. But what the soul is what the body, and
why the soul is said to have been elder than the body, shall be made
appear in the progress of this discourse. The ignorance of this seems
to have been the occasion of much doubt and incredulity in reference to
the true opinion.

5. First therefore, I shall propose my own sentiments concerning these
things, desiring to gain credit no otherwise than by the most probable
strength of arguments, explaining and reconciling to the utmost of
my ability truth and paradox together; after which I shall apply
both the explication and demonstration to the words of the text. In
my opinion then the business lies thus. The world, saith Heraclitus,
neither did any one of all the Gods nor any mortal man create,—as if
he had been afraid that, not being able to make out the creation by a
Deity, we should be constrained to acknowledge some man to have been
the architect of the universe. But certainly far better it is, in
submission to Plato’s judgment, to avow, both in discourse and in our
songs of praise, that the glory of the structure belongs to God,—for
the frame itself is the most beautiful of all masterpieces, and God the
most illustrious of all causes,—but that the substance and materials
were not created, but always ready at the ordering and disposal of the
Omnipotent Builder, to give it form and figure, as near as might be,
approaching to his own resemblance. For the creation was not out of
nothing, but out of matter wanting beauty and perfection, like the rude
materials of a house, a garment, or a statue, lying first in shapeless
confusion. For before the creation of the world there was nothing but
a confused heap; yet was that confused heap neither without a body,
without motion, nor without a soul. The corporeal part was without form
or consistence, and the moving part stupid and headlong; and this was
the disorder of a soul not guided by reason. God neither incorporated
that which is incorporeal, nor conveyed a soul into that which had
none before; like a person either musical or poetical, who does not
make either the voice or the movement, but only reduces the voice with
harmony, and graces the movement with proper measures. Thus God did not
make the tangible and resistant solidity of the corporeal substance,
nor the imaginative or moving faculties of the soul; but taking these
two principles as they lay ready at hand,—the one obscure and dark, the
other turbulent and senseless, both imperfect without the bounds of
order and decency,—he disposed, digested, and embellished the confused
mass, so that he brought to perfection a most absolute and glorious
creature. Therefore the substance of the body is no other than that
all-receiving Nature, the seat and nurse of all created beings.

6. But the substance of the soul, in Philebus, he called an infinite
being, the privation of number and proportion; having neither
period nor measure either of diminution or excess or distinction or
dissimilitude. But as to that order which he alleges in Timaeus to
be the mixture of nature with the indivisible substance, but which
being applied to bodies becomes liable to division,—he would not have
it thought to be a bulk made up by units or points, nor longitude
and breadth, which are qualities more consentaneous to bodies
than to the soul, but that disorderly unlimited principle, moving
both itself and other substances, that which he frequently calls
necessity, and which within his treatise of laws he openly styles
the disorderly, ill-acting, or harm-doing soul. For such was this
soul of herself; but at length she came to partake of understanding,
ratiocination, and harmony, that she might be the soul of the world.
Now that all-receiving principle of matter enjoyed both magnitude,
space, and distance; but beauty, form, and measure of proportion it
had none. However, all these it obtained, to the end that, when it
came to be thus embellished and adorned, it might assume the form
of all the various bodies and organs of the earth, the sea, the
heavens, the stars, and of all those infinite varieties of plants
and living creatures. Now as for those who attribute to this matter,
and not to the soul, that which in Timaeus is called necessity, in
Philebus vast disproportion and unlimited exorbitancy of diminution
and excess,—they can never maintain it to be the cause of disorder,
since Plato always alleges that same matter to be without any form or
figures, and altogether destitute of any quality or effectual virtue
properly belonging to it; comparing it to such oils as have no scent
at all, which the perfumers mix in their tinctures. For there is no
likelihood that Plato would suppose that to be the cause and principle
of evil which is altogether void of quality in itself, sluggish, and
never to be roused on to action, and yet at the same time brand this
immensity with the harsh epithets of base and mischievous, and call it
necessity repugnant and contumaciously rebellious against God. For
this same necessity, which renverses heaven (to use his own phrase
in his Politicus) and turns it the quite contrary way from decency
and symmetry, together with innate concupiscence, and that inbred
confusion of ancient nature, hurly-burly’d with all manner of disorder,
before they were wrought and kneaded into the graceful decorum of
the world,—whence came they to be conveyed into several varieties of
forms and beings, if the subject, which is the first matter, were void
of all quality whatsoever and deprived of all efficient cause; more
especially the Architect being so good of himself, and intending a
frame the nearest approaching to his own perfections? For besides these
there is no third principle. And indeed, we should stumble into the
perplexed intricacies of the Stoics, should we advance evil into the
world out of nonentity, without either any preceding cause or effect of
generation, in regard that among those principles that have a being,
it is not probable that either real good or that which is destitute of
all manner of quality should afford birth or substance to evil. But
Plato escaped those pitfalls into which they blundered who came after
him; who, neglecting what he carefully embraced, the third principle
and energetic virtue in the middle between God and the first matter,
maintain the most absurd of arguments, affirming the nature of evils
to have crept in spontaneously and adventitiously, I know not how nor
by what strange accidents. And yet they will not allow an atom of
Epicurus so much as a moment’s liberty to shift in its station, which,
as they say, would infer motion out of nonentity without any impulsive
cause; nevertheless themselves presuming all this while to affirm that
vice and wickedness, together with a thousand other incongruities and
vexations afflicting the body, of which no cause can be ascribed to any
of the principles, came into being (as it were) “by consequence.”

7. Plato however does not so; who, despoiling the first matter of
all manner of distinction, and separating from God, as far as it is
possible, the causes of evil, has thus delivered himself concerning
the world, in his Politicus. “The world,” saith he, “received from the
Illustrious Builder all things beautiful and lovely; but whatsoever
happens to be noxious and irregular in heaven, it derives from its
ancient habit and disposition, and conveys them into the several
creatures.” And a little farther in the same treatise he saith: “In
process of time, when oblivion had encroached upon the world, the
distemper of its ancient confusion more prevailed, and the hazard
is, lest being dissolved it should again be sunk and plunged into
the immense abyss of its former irregularity.” But there can be no
dissimilitude in the first matter, as being void of quality and
distinction.

Of which when Eudemus with several others was altogether ignorant, he
seems deridingly to cavil with Plato, and taxes him with asserting the
first matter to be the cause, the root, and principle of all evil,
which he had at other times so frequently dignified with the tender
appellations of mother and nurse. Whereas Plato gives to matter only
the titles of the mother and nurse; but the cause of evil he makes
to be the moving force residing within it, not governed by order and
reason, though not without a soul neither, which, in his treatise of
the Laws, he calls expressly the soul repugnant and in hostility with
that other propitiously and kindly acting. For though the soul be the
principle of motion, yet is it the understanding and intelligence which
measures that motion by order and harmony, and is the cause of both.
For God could not have brought to rest mere sleepy and sluggish matter,
but he brought it to rest when it had been troubled and disquieted by
a senseless and stupid cause. Neither did he infuse into nature the
principles of alteration and affections; but when it was under the
pressure of those unruly disorders and alterations, he discharged it
of its manifold enormities and irregularities, making use of symmetry,
proportion, and number. For these are the most proper instruments, not
by alteration and lawless motion to distract the several beings with
passions and distinctions, but rather to render them fixed and stable,
and nearest in their composition to those things that in themselves
continue still the same upon the equal poise of diuturnity. And this,
in my judgment, is the sense and meaning of Plato.

8. Of which the easy reconciliation of his seeming incongruities and
contradiction of himself may serve for the first proof. For indeed no
men of judgment would have objected to the most Bacchanalian sophister,
more especially to Plato, the guilt of so much inconvenience and
impudent rashness in a discourse by him so elaborately studied, as to
affirm the same nature in one place never to have been created, in
another to have been the effects of generation;—in Phaedrus to assert
the soul eternal, in Timaeus to subject it to procreation. The words
in Phaedrus need no repetition, as being familiar to nearly every one,
wherein he proves the soul to be incorruptible in regard it never had a
beginning, and to have never had a beginning because it moves itself.
But in Timaeus, “God,” saith he, “did not make the soul a junior to
the body, as now we labor to prove it to have been subsequent to the
body. For he would never have suffered the more ancient, because linked
and coupled with the younger, to have been governed by it; only we,
guided I know not how by chance and inconsiderate rashness, frame odd
kind of notions to ourselves. But God most certainly composed the soul
excelling the body both in seniority of origin and in power, to be
mistress and governess of her inferior servant.”[189] And then again
he adds, how that the soul, being turned upon herself, began the divine
beginning of an eternal and prudent life. “Now,” saith he, “the body
of heaven became visible; but the soul being invisible, nevertheless
participating of ratiocination and harmony, by the best of intelligible
and eternal beings she was made the best of things created.”[190] Here
then he determines God to be the best of sempiternal beings, the soul
to be the most excellent of temporal existences. By which apparent
distinction and antithesis he denies that the soul is eternal, and that
it never had a beginning.

9. And now what other or better reconciliation of these seeming
contrarieties than his own explanation, to those that are willing
to apprehend it? For he declares to have been without beginning the
never procreated soul, that moved all things confusedly and in an
irregular manner before the creation of the world. But as for that
which God composed out of this and that other permanent and choicest
substance, making it both prudent and orderly, and adding of his own,
as if it were for form and beauty’s sake, intellect to sense, and
order to motion, and which he constituted prince and chieftain of
the whole,—that he acknowledges to have had a beginning and to have
proceeded from generation. Thus he likewise pronounces the body of the
world in one respect to be eternal and without beginning, in another
sense to be the work of creation. To which purpose, where he says
that the visible structure, never in repose at first but restless in
a confused and tempestuous motion, was at length by the hand of God
disposed and ranged into majestic order,—where he says that the four
elements, fire and water, earth and air, before the stately pile was by
them embellished and adorned, caused a prodigious fever and shivering
ague in the whole mass of matter, that labored under the combats of
their unequal mixtures, by his urging these things, he gives those
bodies room in the vast abyss before the fabric of the universe.

Again, when he says that the body was younger than the soul, and that
the world was created, as being of a corporeal substance that may
be seen and felt,—which sort of substances must necessarily have a
beginning and be created,—it is evidently demonstrable from thence that
he ascribes original creation to the nature of bodies. But he is far
from being repugnant or contradictory to himself in these sublimest
mysteries. For he does not contend, that the same body was created
by God or after the same manner, and yet that it was before it had
a being,—which would have been to act the part of a juggler; but he
instructs us what we ought to understand by generations and creation.
Therefore, says he, at first all these things were void of measure and
proportion; but when God first began to beautify the whole, the fire
and water, earth and air, having perhaps some prints and footsteps of
their forms, lay in a huddle jumbled all together,—as probable it is
that all things are, where God is absent,—which then he reduced to a
comely perfection varied by number and order. Moreover, having told us
before that it was a work not of one but of a twofold proportion to
bind and fasten the bulky immensity of the whole, which was both solid
and of a prodigious profundity, he then comes to declare how God, after
he had placed the water and the earth in the midst between the fire and
the air, incontinently closed up the heavens into a circular form. Out
of these materials, saith he, being four in number, was the body of the
world created, agreeing in proportion, and so amicably corresponding
together, that being thus embodied and confined within their proper
bounds, it is impossible that any dissolution should happen from their
own contending force, unless he that riveted the whole frame should
go about again to rend it in pieces;—most apparently teaching us,
that God was not the parent and architect of the corporeal substance
only, or of the bulk and matter, but of the beauty and symmetry and
similitude that adorned and graced the whole. The same we are to
believe, he thought, concerning the soul; that there is one which
neither was created by God nor is the soul of the world, but a certain
self-moving and restless efficacy of a giddy and disorderly agitation
and impetuosity, irrational and subject to opinion; while the other is
that which God himself, having accoutred and adorned it with suitable
numbers and proportions, has made queen regent of the created world,
herself the product of creation also.

10. Now that Plato had this belief concerning these things, and did
not for contemplation’s sake lay down these suppositions concerning
the creation of the world and the soul,—this, among many others, seems
to be an evident signification that, as to the soul, he avers it to be
both created and not created, but as to the world, he always maintains
that it had a beginning and was created, never that it was uncreated
and eternal. What necessity therefore of bringing any testimonies out
of Timaeus? For the whole treatise, from the beginning to the end,
discourses of nothing else but of the creation of the world. As for
the rest, we find that Timaeus, in his Atlantic, addressing himself
in prayer to the Deity, calls God that being which of old existed
in his works, but now was apparent to reason. In his Politicus, his
Parmenidean guest acknowledges that the world, which was the handiwork
of God, is replenished with several good things, and that, if there be
any thing in it which is vicious and offensive, it comes by mixture
of its former incongruous and irrational habit. But Socrates, in the
Politics, beginning to discourse of number, which some call by the name
of wedlock, says: “The created Divinity has a circular period, which
is, as it were, enchased and involved in a certain perfect number;”
meaning in that place by created Divinity no other than the world
itself.

* * * * *

11. The first pair of these numbers consists of one and two, the second
of three and four, the third of five and six; neither of which pairs
make a tetragonal number, either by themselves or joined with any other
figures. The fourth consists of seven and eight, which, being added all
together, produce a tetragonal number of thirty-six. But the quaternary
of numbers set down by Plato have a more perfect generation, of even
numbers multiplied by even distances, and of odd by uneven distances.
This quaternary contains the unit, the common original of all even and
odd numbers. Subsequent to which are two and three, the first plane
numbers; then four and nine, the first squares; and next eight and
twenty-seven, the first cubical numbers (not counting the unit). Whence
it is apparent, that his intention was not that the numbers should be
placed in a direct line one above another, but apart and oppositely one
against the other, the even by themselves, and the odd by themselves,
according to the scheme here given. In this manner similar numbers will
be joined together, which will produce other remarkable numbers, as
well by addition as by multiplication.

1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8

[Illustration:

1
/\
/ \
2 / 5 \ 3
/ \
4 / 13 \ 9
/ \
8 / 35 \ 27
- - - - - - - -
]

12. By addition thus: two and three make five, four and nine make
thirteen, eight and twenty-seven make thirty-five. Of all which numbers
the Pythagoreans called five the nourisher, that is to say, the
breeding or fostering sound, believing a fifth to be the first of all
the intervals of tones which could be sounded. But as for thirteen,
they called it the remainder, despairing, as Plato himself did, of
being ever able to divide a tone into equal parts. Then five and
thirty they named harmony, as consisting of the two cubes eight and
twenty-seven, the first that rise from an odd and an even number, as
also of the four numbers, six, eight, nine, and twelve, comprehending
both harmonical and arithmetical proportion. Which nevertheless will be
more conspicuous, being made out in a scheme to the eye.

[Illustration]

Admit a right-angled parallelogram, A B C D, the lesser side of which
A B consists of five, the longer side A C contains seven squares. Let
the lesser division be unequally divided into two and three squares,
marked by E; and the larger division in two unequal divisions more of
three and four squares, marked by F. Thus A E F G comprehends six, E B
G I nine, F G C H eight, and G I H D twelve. By this means the whole
parallelogram, containing thirty-five little square areas, comprehends
all the proportions of the first concords of music in the number of
these little squares. For six is exceeded by eight in a sesquiterce
proportion (3: 4), wherein the diatessaron is comprehended. And six is
exceeded by nine in a sesquialter proportion (2: 3), wherein also is
included the fifth. Six is exceeded by twelve in duple proportion (1:
2), containing the octave; and then lastly, there is the sesquioctave
proportion of a tone in eight to nine. And therefore they call that
number which comprehends all these proportions harmony. This number
is 35, which being multiplied by 6, the product is 210, which is the
number of days, they say, which brings those infants to perfection that
are born at the seventh month’s end.

13. To proceed by way of multiplication,—twice 3 make 6, and 4
times 9 thirty-six, and 8 times 27 produce 216. Thus six appears to
be a perfect number, as being equal in its parts; and it is called
matrimony, by reason of the mixture of the first even and odd. Moreover
it is composed of the original number, which is one, of the first
even number, which is two, and the first odd number, which is three.
Then for 36, it is the first number which is as well quadrangular as
triangular, being quadrangular from 6, and triangular from 8.[191] The
same number arises from the multiplication of the first two square
numbers, 4 and 9; as also from the addition of the three cubical
numbers, 1, 8, and 27, which being put together make up 36. Lastly,
you have a parallelogram with unequal sides, by the multiplication of
12 by 3, or 9 by 4. Take then the numbers of the sides of all these
figures, the 6 of the square, the 8 of the triangle, the 9 for the one
parallelogram, and the 12 for the other; and there you will find the
proportions of all the concords. For 12 to 9 will be a fourth, as nete
to paramese. To eight it will prove a fifth, as nete to mese. To six it
will be an octave, as nete to hypate. And the two hundred and sixteen
is the cubical number proceeding from six which is its root, and so
equal to its own perimeter.

14. Now these numbers aforesaid being endued with all these properties,
the last of them, which is 27, has this peculiar to itself, that it
is equal to all those that precede together; besides, that it is the
periodical number of the days wherein the moon finishes her monthly
course; the Pythagoreans make it to be the tone of all the harmonical
intervals. On the other side, they call thirteen the remainder, in
regard it misses a unit to be half of twenty-seven. Now that these
numbers comprehend the proportions of harmonical concord, is easily
made apparent. For the proportion of 2 to 1 is duple, which contains
the diapason; as the proportion of 3 to 2 sesquialter, which embraces
the fifth; and the proportion of 4 to 3 sesquiterce, which comprehends
the diatessaron; the proportion of 9 to 3 triple, including the
diapason and diapente; and that of 8 to 2 quadruple, comprehending the
double diapason. Lastly, there is the sesquioctave in 8 to 9, which
makes the interval of a single tone. If then the unit, which is common,
be counted as well to the even as the odd numbers, the whole series
will be equal to the sum of the decade. For the even numbers[192] (1
+ 2 + 4 + 8) give 15, the triangular number of five. On the other
side, take the odd numbers, 1, 3, 9, and 27, and the sum is 40; by
which numbers the skilful measure all musical intervals, of which they
call one a diesis, and the other a tone. Which number of 40 proceeds
from the force of the quaternary number by multiplication. For every
one of the first four numbers being by itself multiplied by four, the
products will be 4, 8, 12, 16, which being added all together make 40,
comprehending all the proportions of harmony. For 16 is a sesquiterce
to 12, duple to 8, and quadruple to 4. Again, 12 holds a sesquialter
proportion to 8, and triple to 4. In these proportions are contained
the intervals of the diatessaron, diapente, diapason, and double
diapason. Moreover, the number 40 is equal to the two first tetragons
and the two first cubes being taken both together. For the first
tetragons are 1 and 4, the first cubes are 8 and 27, which being added
together make 40. Whence it appears that the Platonic quaternary is
much more perfect and fuller of variety than the Pythagoric.

15. But since the numbers proposed did not afford space sufficient for
the middle intervals, therefore there was a necessity to allow larger
bounds for the proportions. And now we are to tell you what those
bounds and middle spaces are. And first, concerning the medieties (or
mean terms); of which that which equally exceeds and is exceeded by
the same number is called arithmetical; the other, which exceeds and
is exceeded by the same proportional part of the extremes, is called
sub-contrary. Now the extremes and the middle of an arithmetical
mediety are 6, 9, 12. For 9 exceeds 6 as it is exceeded by 12, that
is to say, by the number three. The extremes and middle of the
sub-contrary are 6, 8, 12, where 8 exceeds 6 by 2, and 12 exceeds 8
by 4; yet 2 is equally the third of 6, as 4 is the third of 12. So
that in the arithmetical mediety the middle exceeds and is exceeded
by the same number; but in the sub contrary mediety, the middle term
wants of one of the extremes, and exceeds the other by the same part
of each extreme; for in the first 3 is the third part of the mean; but
in the latter 4 and 2 are third parts each of a different extreme.
Whence it is called sub-contrary. This they also call harmonic, as
being that whose middle and extremes afford the first concords; that is
to say, between the highest and lowermost lies the diapason, between
the highest and the middle lies the diapente, and between the middle
and lowermost lies the fourth or diatessaron. For suppose the highest
extreme to be placed at nete and the lowermost at hypate, the middle
will fall upon mese, making a fifth to the uppermost extreme, but a
fourth to the lowermost. So that nete answers to 12, mese to 8, and
hypate to 6.

16. Now the more readily to find out these means Eudorus hath taught
us an easy method. For after you have proposed the extremities, if you
take the half part of each and add them together, the product shall be
the middle, alike in both duple and triple proportions, in arithmetical
mediety. But as for sub-contrary mediety, in duple proportion, first
having fixed the extremes, take the third part of the lesser and the
half of the larger extreme, and the addition of both together shall
be the middle; in triple proportion, the half of the lesser and the
third part of the larger extreme shall be the mean. As for example, in
triple proportion, let 6 be the least extreme, and 18 the biggest; if
you take 3 which is the half of 6, and 6 which is the third part of
18, the product by addition will be 9, exceeding and exceeded by the
same proportional parts of the extremes. In this manner the mediums are
found out; and these are so to be disposed and placed as to fill up the
duple and triple intervals. Now of these proposed numbers, some have no
middle space, others have not sufficient. Being therefore so augmented
that the same proportions may remain, they will afford sufficient space
for the aforesaid mediums. To which purpose, instead of a unit they
choose the six, as being the first number including in itself a half
and third part, and so multiplying all the figures below it and above
it by 6, they make sufficient room to receive the mediums, both in
double and triple distances, as in the example below:—

12 2 | | 3 18
24 4 | 6 | 9 54
48 8 | | 27 162

Now Plato laid down this for a position, that the intervals of
sesquialters, sesquiterces, and sesquioctaves having once arisen from
these connections in the first spaces, the Deity filled up all the
sesquiterce intervals with sesquioctaves, leaving a part of each, so
that the interval left of the part should bear the numerical proportion
of 256 to 243.[193] From these words of Plato they were constrained
to enlarge their numbers and make them bigger. Now there must be two
numbers following in order in sesquioctave proportion. But the six
does not contain a sesquioctave; and if it should be cut up into parts
and the units bruised into fractions, this would strangely perplex
the study of these things. Therefore the occasion itself advised
multiplication; so that, as in changes in the musical scale, the whole
scheme was extended in agreement with the first (or base) number.
Eudorus therefore, imitating Crantor, made choice of 384 for his
first number, being the product of 64 multiplied by 6; which way of
proceeding the number 64 led them to, having for its sesquioctave 72.
But it is more agreeable to the words of Plato to introduce the half of
384. For the remainder of that will bear a sesquioctave proportion in
those numbers which Plato mentions, 256 and 243, if we make use of 192
for the first number. But if the same number be made choice of doubled,
the remainder (or leimma) will have the same proportion, but the
numbers will be doubled, i.e. 512 and 486. For 256 is in sesquiterce
proportion to 192, as 512 to 384. Neither was Crantor’s reduction of
the proportions to this number without reason, which made his followers
willing to pursue it; in regard that 64 is both the square of the
first cube, and the cube of the first square; and being multiplied by
3, the first odd and trigonal, and the first perfect and sesquialter
number, it produces 192, which also has its sesquioctave, as we shall
demonstrate.

17. But first of all, we shall better understand what this leimma or
remainder is and what was the opinion of Plato, if we do but call
to mind what was frequently bandied in the Pythagorean schools. For
interval in music is all that space which is comprehended by two sounds
varied in pitch. Of which intervals, that which is called a tone is
the full excess of diapente above diatessaron; and this being divided
into two parts, according to the opinion of the musicians, makes two
intervals, both which they call a semitone. But the Pythagoreans,
despairing to divide a tone into equal parts, and therefore perceiving
the two divisions to be unequal, called the lesser leimma (or defect),
as being lesser than the half. Therefore some there are who make the
diatessaron, which is one of the concords, to consist of two tones and
a half; others, of two tones and leimma. In which case sense seems
to govern the musicians, and demonstration the mathematicians. The
proof by demonstration is thus made out. For it is certain from the
observation of instruments that the diapason has double proportion,
the diapente a sesquialter, the diatessaron a sesquiterce, and the
tone a sesquioctave proportion. Now the truth of this will easily
appear upon examination, by hanging two weights double in proportion
to two strings, or by making two pipes of equal hollowness double in
length, the one to the other. For the bigger of the pipes will yield
the deep sound, as hypate to nete; and of the two strings, that which
is extended by the double weight will be acuter than the other, as nete
to hypate; and this is a diapason. In the same manner two longitudes
or ponderosities, being taken in the proportion of 3: 2, will produce
a diapente; and three to four will yield a diatessaron; of which the
latter carries a sesquiterce, the former a sesquialter proportion.
But if the same inequality of weight or length be so ordered as nine
to eight, it will produce a tonic interval, no perfect concord, but
harmonical enough; in regard the strings being struck one after another
will yield so many musical and pleasing sounds, but all together a
dull and ungrateful noise. But if they are touched in consort, either
single or together, thence a delightful melody will charm the ear. Nor
is all this less demonstrable by reason. For in music, the diapason
is composed of the diapente and diatessaron. But in numbers, the
duple is compounded of the sesquialter and sesquiterce. For 12 is a
sesquiterce to 9, but a sesquialter to 8, and a duple to 6. Therefore
is the duple proportion composed of the sesquialter and sesquiterce,
as the diapason of the diapente and diatessaron. For here the diapente
exceeds the diatessaron by a tone; there the sesquialter exceeds
the sesquiterce by a sesquioctave. Whence it is apparent that the
diapason carries a double proportion, the diapente a sesquialter, the
diatessaron a sesquiterce, and the tone a sesquioctave.

18. This being thus demonstrated, let us see whether the sesquioctave
will admit a division into two equal parts; which if it will not do,
neither will a tone. However, in regard that 9 and 8, which make the
first sesquioctave, have no middle interval, but both being doubled,
the space that falls between causes two intervals, thence it is
apparent that, if those distances were equal, the sesquioctave also
might be divided into equal parts. Now the double of 9 is 18, that
of 8 is 16, the intermedium 17; by which means one of the intervals
becomes larger, the other lesser; for the first is that of 18 to 17,
the second that of 17 to 16. Thus the sesquioctave proportion not being
to be otherwise than unequally divided, consequently neither will the
tone admit of an equal division. So that neither of these two sections
of a divided tone is to be called a semitone, but according as the
mathematicians name it, the remainder. And this is that which Plato
means, when he says, that God, having filled up the sesquiterces with
sesquioctaves, left a part of each; of which the proportion is the same
as of 256 to 243. For admit a diatessaron in two numbers comprehending
sesquiterce proportion, that is to say, in 256 and 192; of which two
numbers, let the lesser 192 be applied to the lowermost extreme, and
the bigger number 256 to the uppermost extreme of the tetrachord.
Whence we shall demonstrate that, this space being filled up by two
sesquioctaves, such an interval remains as lies between the numbers 256
and 243. For the lower string being forced a full tone upward, which is
a sesquioctave, it makes 216; and being screwed another tone upward it
makes 243. Which 243 exceeds 216 by 27, and 216 exceeds 192 by 24. And
then again of these two numbers, 27 is the eighth of 216, and 24 the
eighth of 192. So the biggest of these two numbers is a sesquioctave
to the middle, and the middle to the least; and the distance from the
least to the biggest, that is from 192 to 243, consists of two tones
filled up with two sesquioctaves. Which being subtracted, the remaining
interval of the whole between 243 and 256 is 13, for which reason they
called this number the remainder. And thus I am apt to believe the
meaning and opinion of Plato to be most exactly explained in these
numbers.

19. Others, placing the two extremes of the diatessaron, the acute part
in 288, and the lower sound in 216, in all the rest observe the same
proportions, only that they take the remainder between the two middle
intervals. For the base, being forced up a whole tone, makes 243; and
the upper note, screwed downward a full tone, begets 256. Moreover 243
carries a sesquioctave proportion to 216, and 288 to 256; so that each
of the intervals contains a full tone, and the residue is that which
remains between 243 and 256, which is not a semitone, but something
less. For 288 exceeds 256 by 32, and 243 exceeds 216 by 27; but 256
exceeds 243 by 13. Now this excess is less than half of the former. So
it is plain that the diatessaron consists of two tones and the residue,
not of two tones and a half. Let this suffice for the demonstration of
these things. Nor is it a difficult thing to believe, by what has been
already said, wherefore Plato, after he had asserted that the intervals
of sesquialter, sesquiterce, and sesquioctave had arisen, when he comes
to fill up the intervals of sesquiterces with sesquioctaves, makes
not the least mention of sesquialters; for that the sesquialter is
soon filled up, by adding the sesquiterce to the sesquioctave, or the
sesquioctave to the sesquiterce.

20. Having therefore shown the manner how to fill up the intervals,
and to place and dispose the medieties, had never any person taken the
same pains before, I should have recommended the further consideration
of it to the recreation of your fancies; but in regard that several
most excellent musicians have made it their business to unfold these
mysteries with a diligence more than usually exact,—more especially
Crantor, Clearchus, and Theodorus, all born in Soli,—it shall suffice
only to show how these men differed among themselves. For Theodorus,
varying from the other two, and not observing two distinct files or
rows of numbers, but placing the duples and triples in a direct line
one before another, grounds himself upon that division of the substance
which Plato calls the division in length, making two parts (as it were)
out of one, not four out of two. Then he says, that the interposition
of the mediums ought to take place in that manner, to avoid the trouble
and confusion which must arise from transferring out of the first
duple into the first triple the intervals which are ordained for the
supplement of both.... But as for those who take Crantor’s part, they
so dispose their numbers as to place planes with planes, tetragons with
tetragons, cubes with cubes, opposite to one another, not taking them
in file, but alternatively odd to even. [Here is some great defect in
the original.]

21. ... Which, being in themselves permanently the same, afford the
form and species; but being subject to corporeal division, they become
the matter and subject to receive the other’s impression, the common
mixture being completed out of both. Now the indivisible substance,
which is always one and the same, is not to be thought to be incapable
of division by reason of its smallness, like the most minute of bodies,
called atoms. But as it is unmixed, and not to be any way affected,
but pure and altogether of one sort, it is said not to consist of
parts, but to be indivisible. By means of which purity, when it comes
in any manner whatsoever to approach and gently touch compounded
divisible and differing substances, all their variety ceases and they
crowd together into one habit by sympathy and similitude. If now any
one will call that substance which admits corporeal separation matter,
as a nature subject to the former and partaking of it, the use of
that equivocal term will nothing disadvantage our discourse. But they
are under a mistake that believe the corporeal to be blended with the
indivisible matter. First, for that Plato does not here make use of any
one of its names; whereas in other places he calls it the receptacle
and nurse, capable of both receiving and fostering the vast infinity
of created beings; not divisible among bodies, but rather the body
itself parted and divided into single individuals. Then again, what
difference would there be between the creation of the world and that
of the soul, if the composition of each proceeded from both matter and
the intelligible essence? Certainly Plato, as endeavoring to separate
the generation of the body from that of the soul, tells us that the
corporeal part was by God seated and deposited within it, and that
it was outwardly covered and enveloped by it; and after he had thus
wrought the soul to its perfection out of proportion, he then proceeds
to this argument concerning matter, of which he had no occasion to make
mention before when he was producing the soul, as being that which had
not its existence from matter.

22. The same may be said against the followers of Posidonius. For they
seem not altogether to separate the soul from matter; but imagining
the essence of limitations to be divisible in reference to bodies,
and intermixing it with the intelligible essence, they defined the
soul to be an idea (or essential form) of that which has extension in
every direction, subsisting in an harmonical proportion of numbers.
For (they say) all mathematical objects are disposed between the first
intelligible and sensible beings; and since the soul contains the
sempiternal nature of things intelligible and the pathetic nature of
things subjected to sense, it seems but rational that it should consist
of a substance between both. But they were ignorant that God, when
the soul was already brought to perfection, afterwards making use of
the limitations of bodies to form and shape the matter, confined and
environed the dissipated and fleeting substance within the compass of
certain surfaces composed of triangles adapted together. And it is
even more absurd to make the soul an idea. For the soul is always in
motion; the idea is incapable of motion; the one never to be mixed with
that which is subjected to sense, the other wrought into the substance
of the body. Moreover, God could be said only to imitate an idea, as
his pattern; but he was the artificer of the soul, as of a work of
perfection. Now enough has been already said to show that Plato does
not assert number to be the substance of the soul, only that it is
ordered and proportioned by number.

23. However this is a common argument against both the former
opinions, that neither in corporeal limits nor in numbers there is
the least footstep or appearance of that power by which the soul
assumes to itself to judge of what is subject to sense. For it was
the participation of the intelligible principle that endued it with
understanding and the perceiving faculty. But as for opinion, belief,
imagination, and its being affected with qualities relating to the
body, no man could ever dream that they proceeded simply either from
units, or lines, or surfaces. For not only the souls of mortals have
a power to judge of what is subject to sense; but the soul of the
world also, says Plato, “when it revolves upon itself, and happens
once to touch upon any fluid and roving substance or upon any thing
indivisible, then being moved throughout its whole self, it gives
notice with what this or that thing is identical, to what heterogeneal,
and in what relations especially and in what manner it happens to be
and to be affected towards each created thing.”[194] Here he gives at
the same time an intimation of the ten Categories or Predicaments; but
afterwards he gives us a clearer manifestation of these things. “For
when true reason,” says he, “is fixed upon what is subject to sense,
and the circle of the Other, observing a just and equal motion, conveys
its intelligence to the whole soul, then both opinion and belief
become steadfast and certain; on the other side, when it is settled
upon ratiocination, and the circle of the Same, turning readily and
easily, furnishes its intimations, then of necessity knowledge arrives
to perfection. And indeed, whoever shall affirm that any thing in
which these two operations take place is any thing besides a soul, may
deservedly be thought to speak any thing rather than the truth.”

From whence then does the soul enjoy this motion whereby it comprehends
what is subject to sense, different from that other intelligible motion
which ends in knowledge? This is a difficult task to resolve, unless
we steadfastly assert that Plato here did not compose the soul, so
singly considered, but the soul of the world also, of the parts above
mentioned,—of the more worthy indivisible substance, and of the less
worthy divisible in reference to bodies. And this soul of the world is
no other than that motion which gives heat and vigor to thought and
fancy, and sympathizes with what is subject to sense, not created, but
existing from eternity, like the other soul. For Nature, which had
the power of understanding, had also the power of opining. But the
intelligible power is subject neither to motion nor affection, being
established upon a substance that is still the same. The other is
movable and fleeting, as being engaged to an unstable, fluctuating, and
disunited matter. In regard the sensible substance was so far from any
order, that it was without shape and boundless. So that the power which
is fixed in this was capable of producing no clear and well-grounded
notions and no certain or well-ordered movements, but only sleepy
dreams and deliriums, which amuse and trouble corporeal stupidity;
unless by accident they lighted upon the more worthy substance. For
it was in the middle between the sensible and discerning faculty, and
had a nature conformable and agreeable to both; from the sensible
apprehending substance, and borrowing from judgment its power of
discerning things intelligible.

24. And this the express words of Plato declare. “For this is my
opinion,” saith he, “in short, that being, place, and generation were
three distinct things even before the heavens were created.”[195] By
place he means matter, as being the seat and receptacle; by being or
existence, the intelligible nature; and by generation, the world not
being yet created, he designs only that substance which was subject to
change and motion, disposed between the forming cause and the thing
formed, transmitting hither those shapes and figures which were there
contrived and moulded. For which reason it was called divisible;
there being a necessity of distributing sense to the sensitive, and
imagination to the imaginative faculty. For the sensitive motion, being
proper to the soul, directs itself to that which is outwardly sensible.
As for the understanding, it was fixed and immovable of itself, but
being settled in the soul and becoming its lord and governor, it turns
upon itself, and accomplishes a circular motion about that which is
always permanent, chiefly laboring to apply itself to the eternally
durable substance. With great difficulty therefore did they admit
a conjunction, till the divisible at length intermixing with the
indivisible, and the restlessly hurried with the sleepy and motionless,
constrained the Other to meet and join with the Same. Yet the Other was
not motion, as neither was the Same stability, but the principle of
distinction and diversity. For both the one and the other proceed from
a different principle; the Same from the unit, the Other from the duad;
and these were first intermixed with the soul, being fastened and bound
together by number, proportion, and harmonical mediums; so that the
Other being riveted into the Same begets diversity and disagreement;
and the Same being fermented into the Other produces order. And this
is apparent from the first powers of the soul, which are judgment and
motion. Motion immediately shows itself in the heavens, giving us an
example of diversity in identity by the circumvolution of the fixed
stars, and of identity in diversity by the order of the planets. For
in them the Same bears the chiefest sway; in terrestrial bodies,
the contrary principle. Judgment has two principles,—understanding
from the Same, to judge of things in general, and sense from the
Other, to judge of things in particular. Reason is a mixture of both,
becoming intellect in reference to things intelligible, and opinion
in things subject to sense; making use of the interdisposed organs
of imagination and memory, of which these in the Same produce the
Other, and those in the Other make the Same. For understanding is the
motion of the considerative faculty about that which is permanent and
stable. Opinion is a continuance of the perceptive faculty upon that
which is continually in motion. But as for fancy or imagination, being
a connection of opinion with sense, the Same has placed it in the
memory; and the Other moves it again in the difference between past and
present, touching at the same time upon diversity and identity.

25. But now let us take a draught of the corresponding composition
of the soul from the structure of the body of the universe. There we
find fire and earth, whose nature is such as not to admit of mixture
one with another but with great difficulty, or rather is altogether
obstinately refractory to mixture and constancy. God therefore, placing
air and water in the middle between both,—the air next the fire, the
water next the earth,—first of all tempered the middlemost one with
another, and next, by the assistance of these two, he brought the
two extreme elements not only to mix with the middlemost, but also
to a mutual closure or conjunction between themselves. Then he drew
together those contrary powers and opposing extremes, the Same and the
Other, not immediately, the one adjoining to the other, but placing
other substances between; the indivisible next the Same, and the
divisible next the Other, disposing each to each in convenient order,
and mixing the extremes with the middlemost. After which manner he
interweaved and tissued the whole into the form and composition of the
soul, completing, as far as it was possible, similitude out of things
different and various, and one out of many. Therefore it is alleged by
some, that Plato erroneously affirmed the nature of the Other to be an
enemy to mixture, as being not only capable to receive it, but a friend
of change. Whereas that should have been rather said of the nature of
the Same; which, being stable and an utter adversary to mutability, is
so far from an easy and willing condescension to mixture, that it flies
and abhors it, to the end it may preserve itself pure and free from
alteration. But they who make these objections against Plato betray
their own ignorance, not understanding that the Same is the idea (or
essential form) of those things that always continue in the same state
and condition, and that the Other is the idea of those things which are
subject to be variously affected; and that it is the peculiar nature
of the one to disjoin and separate into many parts whatever it happens
to lay hold upon, and of the other to cement and assimilate scattered
substances, till they resume one particular form and efficacy.

26. And these are the powers and virtues of the soul of the universe.
And when they once enter into the organs of corruptible bodies, being
themselves incorruptible, there the form of the binary and boundless
principle shows itself most briskly, while that of the unmixed and
purer principle lies as it were dormant in obscurity. And thus
it happens, that a man shall rarely observe any human passion or
motion of the understanding, void of reason, where there shall not
something appear either of desire or emulation, joy or grief. Several
philosophers therefore will have the passions to be so many sorts of
reasonings, seeing that desire, grief, and anger are all the effects
of judgment. Others allege the virtues themselves to be derived from
passions; fortitude depending on fear, temperance on voluptuousness,
and justice on love of gain. Now the soul being both speculative and
practical, contemplating as well generals as particulars, and seeming
to comprehend the one by the assistance of the intellect and the
other by the aid of sense, common reason, which encounters the Same
in the Other and the Other in the Same, endeavors by certain limits
and distinctions to separate one from many and the divisible from the
indivisible; but she cannot accomplish her design nor be purely in one
or the other, in regard the principles are so oddly interwoven and
intermixed and confusedly huddled together.

For this reason did God constitute a receptacle for the Same and the
Other, out of the indivisible and divisible substance, to the end there
might be order in variety. Now this was generation. For without this
the Same could have no variety, and therefore no motion or generation;
and the Other could have no order, and therefore no consistence or
generation. For should we grant the Same to be different from the
Other, and the Other to be the Same with itself, such a commixture
would produce nothing generative, but would want a third something,
like matter, to receive both and be disposed of by both. And this is
that matter which God first composed, when he bounded the movable
nature of bodies by the steadfastness of things intelligible.

27. Now then, as voice, merely voice, is only an insignificant and
brutish noise, but speech is the expression of the mind by significant
utterance; as harmony consists of sounds and intervals,—a sound being
always one and the same, and an interval being the difference and
diversity of sounds, while both being mixed together produce air and
melody;—thus the passive nature of the soul was without limits and
unstable, but afterwards became determinate, when limits were set and a
certain form was given to the divisible and manifold variety of motion.
Thus having comprised the Same and the Other, by the similitudes and
dissimilitudes of numbers which produce concord out of disagreement, it
becomes the life of the world, sober and prudent, harmony itself, and
reason overruling necessity mixed with persuasion. This necessity is by
most men called fate or destiny, by Empedocles friendship and discord,
by Heraclitus the opposite straining harmony of the world, as of a
bow or harp, by Parmenides light and darkness, by Anaxagoras mind and
infinity, by Zoroaster God and Daemon, naming one Oromasdes, the other
Arimanius. Though as for Euripides, he makes use of the disjunctive
erroneously for the copulative, where he says,

Jove, whether he be
Necessity, that Nature’s force controls,
Or the intelligence of human souls

For, indeed, the powers which bear dominion over the universe are
necessity and wisdom. This is that therefore which the Egyptians
intimate in their fables, feigning that, when Horus was punished and
dismembered, he bequeathed his spirit and blood to his father, but his
flesh and his fat to his mother. There is no part of the soul which
remains pure and unmixed, or separate from the rest; for, according
to the opinion of Heraclitus, “harmony latent is of greater value
than that which is visible,” as being that wherein the blending Deity
concealed and sunk all varieties and dissimilitudes. Nevertheless,
there appears in the irrational part a turbulent and boisterous
temerity; in the rational part, an orderly and well-marshalled
prudence; in the sensitive part, the constraint of necessity; but in
the understanding, entire and perfect command of itself. The limiting
and bounding power sympathizes with the whole and the indivisible,
by reason of the nearness of their relations; on the other side,
the dividing power fixes itself upon particulars, by virtue of the
divisible substance; and the whole rejoices at the mutation of the Same
by means of the Other, as occasion requires. In the like manner, the
various inclinations of men to virtue and vice, to pleasure and toil,
as also the enthusiasms and raptures of lovers, the combats of honor
with lustful desires, plainly demonstrate the mixture of the divine and
impassible with the moral and corporeal part; of which Plato himself
calls the one concupiscence of pleasures, natural to ourselves; the
other an opinion introduced from without, aspiring to the chiefest
good. For passible qualities of the soul arise from herself; but she
participates of understanding, as being infused from without, by the
more worthy principle.

28. Nor is the celestial nature privileged from this double society
and communion. For sometimes it is seen to incline one way or the
other, but it is set right again by the more powerful revolution of
the Same, and governs the world. Nay, there shall come a time, as it
has happened already, when the world’s moving wisdom shall grow dull
and drowsy, drowned in oblivion of its own duty; while that which
is familiar and agreeable to the body from the beginning draws and
winds back the right-hand motion of the universe, causing the wheels
to go slow and heavy. Yet shall it not be able to dash in pieces the
whole movement, for that the better part, rousing and recollecting
herself and observing the pattern and exemplar of God, shall with
his aid reduce all things again into their former order. Thus it is
demonstrable by many proofs, that the soul was not altogether the
workmanship of the Deity, but that having in itself a certain portion
of innate evil, it was by him digested and beautified who limited
infinity by unity, to the end it might be a substance within the
compass of certain limits; intermixing order and mutation, variety and
resemblance, by the force of the Same and the Other; and lastly working
into all these, as far as it was possible, a mutual community and
friendship by the assistance of numbers and harmony.

29. Concerning which things, although you have heard frequent
discourses, and have likewise read several arguments and disputes
committed to writing upon the same subjects, it will not be amiss for
me also to give a short account, after a brief repetition of Plato’s
own words. “God,” said he, “in the first place withdrew one part from
the whole; which done, he took away the double of that; then a third
part, sesquialter in proportion to the second, and triple to the first;
then a fourth part, double to the second; next a fifth part, being the
triple of the third; then a sixth, eight times the first; and lastly a
seventh, being twenty-seven times the first. This done, he filled up
the duple and triple intervals, retrenching also from thence certain
other particles, and placing them in the midst of those intervals; so
that in every interval there might be two medieties, the one exceeding
and being exceeded by one and the same part of the extremes, the other
exceeding and being exceeded by the same number. Now in regard that
from these connections in the first spaces there arose the intervals
of sesquialters, sesquiterces, and sesquioctaves, he filled up all the
sesquiterce intervals with sesquioctaves, leaving a part of each, so
that the interval left of the part might bear the numerical proportion
of 256 to 243.”[196]

Here the question will be first concerning the quantity, next
concerning the order, and in the third place concerning the force and
virtue of the numbers. As to the quantity, we are to consider which he
takes in the double and triple intervals. As to the order, whether they
are to be placed in one row, according to the direction of Theodorus,
or (as Crantor will have them) in the form of a _Λ_, placing the
unit at the top, and the duples and triples apart by themselves in two
several files. Lastly, we are to examine of what use and virtue they
are in the structure and composition of the soul.

30. As to the first, we shall relinquish the opinion of those who
affirm that it is enough, in proportions, to consider the nature of
the intervals, and of the medieties which fill up their vacancies; and
that the demonstration can be made out for any numbers whatsoever that
have spaces sufficient to receive the aforesaid proportions. For this
being granted, it makes the demonstration obscure, without the help of
schemes, and drives us from another theory, which carries with it a
delight not unbecoming philosophy.

1
2 3
4 9
8 27

Beginning therefore from the unit, let us place the duples and triples
apart; and there will be on the one side, 2, 4, 8; on the other 3, 9,
27;—seven numbers in all, proceeding forward by multiplication four
steps from the unit, which is assumed as the common base.... For not
only here, but upon other occasions, the sympathy of the quaternary
number with the septenary is apparent. There is this peculiar to that
tetractys or quaternary number thirty six, so much celebrated by the
Pythagoreans, which is more particularly worthy admiration,—that it is
composed of the first four even numbers and the first four odd numbers;
and it is the fourth connection made of numbers put together in order.
The first connection is of one and two; the second of odd numbers....
For placing the unit, which is common to both, before, he first takes
eight and then twenty-seven, as it were pointing out with the finger
where to place each particular sort.

[These places are so depraved in the original, that the sense is lost.]

But it belongs to others to explain these things more accurately and
distinctly; while we content ourselves with only what remains, as
peculiarly proper to the subject in hand.

31. For it was not out of vain-glory, to boast his skill in the
mathematical sciences, that Plato inserted in a treatise of natural
philosophy this discourse of harmonical and arithmetical medieties, but
believing them both apt and convenient to demonstrate the structure and
composition of the soul. For some there are who seek these proportions
in the swift motions of the spheres of the planets; others rather in
the distances, others in the magnitude of the stars; others, more
accurate and nice in their enquiry, seek for the same proportions in
the diameters of the epicycles; as if the Supreme Architect, for the
sake of these, had adapted the soul, divided into seven parts, to
the celestial bodies. Many also there are, who hither transfer the
inventions of the Pythagoreans, tripling the distances of bodies from
the middle. This is done by placing the unit next the fire; three next
the Antichthon, or earth which is opposite to our earth; nine next the
Earth; 27 next the Moon; 81 next to Mercury; 243 upon Venus; and 729
upon the Sun. The last (729) is both a tetragonal and cubical number,
whence it is, that they also call the sun a tetragon and a cube. By
this way of tripling they also reduce the other stars to proportion.
But these people may be thought to dote and to wander very much from
reason, if there be any use of geometrical demonstration, since by
their mistakes we find that the most probable proofs proceed from
thence; and although geometers do not always make out their positions
exactly, yet they approach the nearest to truth when they say that the
diameter of the sun, compared with the diameter of the earth, bears
the proportion of 12 to 1; while the diameter of the earth to that of
the moon carries a triple proportion. And for that which appears to be
the least of the fixed stars, the diameter of it is no less than the
third part of the diameter of the earth, and the whole globe of the
earth to the whole globe of the moon is as twenty-seven to one. The
diameters of Venus and the earth bear a duple, the globes or spheres
of both an octave proportion. The width of the shadow which causes an
eclipse holds a triple proportion to the diameter of the moon; and the
deviation of the moon from the middle of the signs, either to the one
or the other side, is a twelfth part. Her positions as to the sun,
either in triangular or quadrangular distances, give her the form when
she appears as in the first quarter and gibbous; but when she comes
to be quite round, that is, when she has run through half the signs,
she then makes (as it were) a kind of diapason harmony with six notes.
But in regard the motions of the sun are slowest when he arrives at
the solstices, and swiftest when he comes to the equinoxes, by which
he takes from the day or adds to the night, the proportion holds thus.
For the first thirty days after the winter solstice, he adds to the
day a sixth part of the length whereby the longest night exceeds
the shortest; the next thirty days he adds a third part; to all the
rest till the equinox he adds a half; and so by sextuple and triple
distances he makes even the irregularity of time.

Moreover, the Chaldaeans make the spring to hold the proportion of a
diatessaron to autumn; of a diapente to the winter, and of a diapason
to the summer. But if Euripides rightly divides the year, where he says,

Four months the parching heats of summer reign,
And four of hoary winter’s cold complain;
Two months doth vernal pride the fields array,
And two months more to autumn tribute pay,

then the seasons shall be said to change in octave proportion.

Others there are, who fancy the earth to be in the lowest string of the
harp, called proslambanomenos; and so proceeding, they place the moon
in hypate, Mercury and Venus in the diatoni and lichani; the sun they
likewise place in mese, as in the midst of the diapason, a fifth above
the earth and a fourth from the sphere of the fixed stars.

32. But neither doth this pleasant conceit of the latter come near the
truth, neither do the former attain perfect accuracy. However, they
who will not allow the latter to depend upon Plato’s sentiments will
yet grant the former to partake of musical proportions; so that, there
being five tetrachords, called ὑπάτων, μέσων, συνημμένων, διεζευγμένων,
and ὑπερβολαίων, in these five distances they place all the planets;
making the first tetrachord from the Moon to the Sun and the planets
which move with the Sun, that is, Mercury and Venus; the next from the
Sun to the fiery planet of Mars; the third between this and Jupiter;
the fourth from thence to Saturn; and the fifth from Saturn to the
sphere of the fixed stars. So that the sounds and notes which bound
the five tetrachords bear the same proportion with the intervals
of the planets. Still further, we know that the ancient musicians
had two notes called hypate, three called nete, one mese, and one
paramese, thus confining their scale to seven standing notes, equal
in number to the number of the planets. But the moderns, adding the
proslambanomenos, which is a full tone in descent from hypate, have
multiplied the scheme into the double diapason, and thereby confounded
the natural order of the concords; for the diapente happens to be
before the diatessaron, with the addition of the whole tone in the
bass. Whereas Plato makes his addition in the upper part; for in his
Republic[197] he says, that every one of the eight spheres rolls about
a Siren which is fixed upon each of the tuneful globes, and that they
all sing one counterpoint without diversity of modulation, taking
every one their peculiar concords, which together complete a melodious
consort.

These Sirens sing for their pleasure divine and heavenly tunes, and
accompany their sacred circuit and dance with an harmonious song of
eight notes. Nor was there necessity of a fuller chorus, in regard that
within the confines of eight notes lay the first bounds and limits of
all duple and triple proportions; the unit being added to both the even
and odd numbers. And certainly from hence it was that the ancients
raised their invention of nine Muses; of which eight were employed in
celestial affairs, as Plato said; the ninth was to take care of things
terrestrial, and to reduce and reform the inequality and confusion of
error and jarring variance.

33. Now then consider whether the soul does not roll and turn and
manage the heavens and the celestial bodies by means of those
harmonious concords and equal motions that are wrought and fermented
within her, being herself most wise and most just. And such she became
by virtue of harmonical proportions, whose images representing things
incorporeal are imprinted into the discernible and visible parts and
bodies of the world. But the chief and most predominating power is
visibly mixed in the soul, which renders her harmonious and obedient
to herself, the other parts unanimously yielding to her as the most
supreme and the divinest part of all. For the Sovereign Artificer and
Creator finding a strange disorder and erroneous confusion in the
motions of the decomposed and unruly soul, which was still at variance
with herself, some things he divided and separated, others he brought
together and reconciled to a mutual sympathy, making use of harmony and
numbers. By virtue of which, the slightest and meanest of insensible
substances, even stocks and stones, the rinds of trees, and sometimes
even the rennets of beasts, by various mixtures, compositions, and
temperatures, may become the charming objects of the sight, or afford
most pleasing perfumes and wholesome medicaments for the relief of
mankind, or be wrought and hollowed to send forth pleasing musical
sounds. And for this reason it was that Zeno of Citium encouraged and
persuaded youth to frequent the theatres, there to observe the variety
of melodious sounds that proceeded from horns or cornets, wooden
hautboys, flutes and reeds, or any other musical instruments to which
the contrivance of art had rightly applied the reason of number and
proportion. Not that we will here maintain, with the Pythagoreans, that
all things resemble number, for that requires a long discourse to prove
it. But where mutual society and sympathy arise out of discord and
dissimilitude, that the cause of this is moderation and order, produced
by the power of harmony and number, was a thing not concealed even from
the poets. And these give to what is friendly and kind the epithet
“evenly fitted;” while, on the other side, men of rugged and malicious
dispositions they called “unevenly tempered,” as if enmity and discord
were nothing but a sort of a disproportion. For this reason, he who
writes Pindar’s elegy gives him this encomium,

To foreigners agreeable, to citizens a friend;[198]

the poet plainly inferring complacency of humor and the aptitude of a
person to fit himself to all tempers to be an excellency aspiring to
virtue itself. Which Pindar himself also testifies, saying of Cadmus,
that he listened to true music from Apollo himself.[199] Nor must we
believe that the theologists, who were the most ancient philosophers,
ordered the pictures and statues of the Gods to be made with musical
instruments in their hands because they thought the Gods no better than
pipers or harpers, but to signify that no work was so becoming to the
Gods as accord and harmony.

Now then, as it would be absurd and ridiculous for any man to search
for sesquiterces, sesquialters, and duples in the neck, or belly,
or sides of a lute or harp,—though every one of these must also be
allowed their symmetry of length and thickness,—the harmony and
proportion of concords being to be sought for in the sound; so it
is most probable that the bodies of the stars, the distances of
spheres, and the swiftness of the motions and revolutions, have their
sundry proportions, as well one to another as to the whole fabric,
like instruments of music well set and tuned, though the measure of
the quantity be unknown to us. However, we are to imagine that the
principal effect and efficacy of these numbers and proportions, which
the Supreme Architect made use of, is that same agreement, harmony, and
consent of the soul with itself, by means of which she replenished the
heavens themselves, when she came to actuate and perform her office
there, with so many infinite beauties, and by which she governs the
earth by virtue of the several seasons, and other alterations wisely
and artificially measured and varied as well for the generation as
preservation of all terrestrial productions.

THAT A PHILOSOPHER OUGHT CHIEFLY TO CONVERSE WITH GREAT MEN.[200]

1. The resolution which you have taken to enter into the friendship
and familiarity of Sorcanus, that by the frequent opportunities of
conversing with him you may cultivate and improve a soil which gives
such early promises of a plentiful harvest, is an undertaking which
will not only oblige his relations and friends, but redound very much
to the advantage of the public; and (notwithstanding the peevish
censures of some morose or ignorant people) it is so far from being an
argument of an aspiring and vain-glorious temper, that it shows you to
be a lover of virtue and good manners, and a zealous promoter of the
common interest of mankind.

They themselves are rather to be accused of an indirect but more
vehement sort of ambition, who would not upon any terms be found in the
company or so much as be seen to give a civil salute to a person of
quality. For how unreasonable would it be to enforce a well-disposed
young gentleman, and one who needs the direction of a wise governor,
to such complaints as these: “Would that I might change myself from
a Pericles or a Cato to a cobbler like Simon or a grammarian like
Dionysius, that I might like them have the conversation of such a man
as Socrates, enjoy his company, and hear his instructive lessons of
morality.”

So far, I am sure, was Aristo of Chios from being of their humor, that
when he was censured for exposing and prostituting the dignity of
philosophy by his freedom to all comers, he answered, that he could
wish that Nature had given understanding to wild beasts, that they
too might be capable of being his hearers. Shall we then deny that
privilege to men of interest and power, which this good man would have
communicated (if it had been possible) to the brute beasts? But these
men have taken a false notion of philosophy, they make it much like the
art of statuary, whose business it is to carve out a lifeless image in
the most exact figure and proportions, and then to raise it upon its
pedestal, where it is to continue for ever. The true philosophy is of a
quite different nature; it is a spring and principle of motion wherever
it comes; it makes men active and industrious, it sets every wheel and
faculty a going, it stores our minds with axioms and rules by which to
make a sound judgment, it determines the will to the choice of what
is honorable and just; and it wings all our faculties to the swiftest
prosecution of it. It is accompanied with an elevation and nobleness
of mind, joined with a coolness and sweetness of behavior, and backed
with a becoming assurance and inflexible resolution. And from this
diffusiveness of the nature of good it follows, that the best and most
accomplished men are inclined to converse with persons of the highest
condition. Indeed a physician, if he have any good nature and sense of
honor, would be more ready to cure an eye which is to see and watch
for a great many thousands, than that of a private person; how much
more then ought a philosopher to form and fashion, to rectify and cure
the soul of such a one, who is (if I may so express it) to inform the
body politic,—who is to think and understand for so many others, to
be in so great measure the rule of reason, the standard of law, and
model of behavior, by which all the rest will square and direct their
actions? Suppose a man to have a talent at finding out springs and
contriving of aqueducts (a piece of skill for which Hercules and other
of the ancients are much celebrated in history), surely he could not so
satisfactorily employ himself in sinking a well or deriving water to
some private seat or contemptible cottage, as in supplying conduits to
some fair and populous city, in relieving an army just perishing with
thirst, or in refreshing and adorning with fountains and cool streams
the beautiful gardens of some glorious monarch. There is a passage of
Homer very pertinent to this purpose, in which he calls Minos Διὸς
μεγάλου ὀαριστήν ὀαριστήν, which, as Plato interprets it, signifies _the
disciple and companion of Jupiter_. For it were beneath his dignity
indeed to teach private men, such as care only for a family or indulge
their useless speculations; but kings are scholars worthy the tuition
of a God, who, when they are well advised, just, good, and magnanimous,
never fail to procure the peace and prosperity of all their subjects.
The naturalists tell us that the eryngium hath such a property with
it, that if one of the flock do but taste it, all the rest will stand
stock still in the same place till the shepherd hath taken it out
of its mouth. Such quickness of action does it have, pervading and
spreading itself over every thing that is near it, as if it were fire.
The effects of philosophy, however, are different according to the
difference of inclinations in men. If indeed it lights on one who loves
a dull and inactive sort of life, that makes himself the centre and
the little conveniences of life the circumference of all his thoughts,
such a one does contract the sphere of her activity, so that having
only made easy and comfortable the life of a single person, it fails
and dies with him; but when it finds a man of a ruling genius, one
fitted for conversation and able to grapple with the difficulties of
public business, if it once possess him with principles of honesty,
honor, and religion, it takes a compendious method, by doing good to
one, to oblige a great part of mankind. Such was the effect of the
conversation of Anaxagoras with Pericles, of Plato with Dion, and of
Pythagoras with the principal statesmen of all Italy. Cato himself took
a voyage, when he had the concern of an expedition lying upon him, to
see and hear Athenodorus; and Scipio sent for Panaetius, when he was
commissioned by the senate “to take a survey alike of the outrages
and the good order which were practised in their provinces,”[201] as
Posidonius observes. Now what a pretty sort of return would it have
been in Panaetius to send word back,—“If indeed you were in a private
capacity, John a Nokes or John a Stiles, that had a mind to get into
some obscure corner or cell, to state cases and resolve syllogisms, I
should very gladly have accepted your invitation; but now, because you
are the son of Paulus Aemilius who was twice consul, and grandson of
that Scipio who was surnamed from his conquest of Hannibal and Africa,
I cannot with honor hold any conversation with you!”

2. The objections which they bring from the two kinds of discourse, one
of which is mental, the other expressed in words or interpretative of
the former, are so stale and pedantical, that they are best answered by
laughter or silence; and we merely quote the old saying, “I knew this
before Theognis was born.” However, thus much shall be said, that the
end of them both is friendship,—in the first case with ourselves, in
the second case with another. For he that hath attained to virtue by
the methods of philosophy hath his mind all in tune and good temper;
he is not struck with those reproaches of conscience, which cause the
acutest sense of pain and are the natural punishments of our follies;
but he enjoys (the great prerogative of a good man) to be always easy
and in amity with himself.

No factious lusts reason’s just power control,
Nor kindle civil discord in his soul.

His passion does not stand in defiance to his reason, nor do his
reasonings cross and thwart one the other, but he is always consistent
with himself. But the very joys of wicked men are tumultuary and
confused, like those who dwell in the borders of two great empires at
variance, always insecure, and in perpetual alarms; whilst a good man
enjoys an uninterrupted peace and serenity of mind, which excels the
other not only in duration, but in sense of pleasure too. As for the
other sort of discourse, that which consists in expression of itself
to others, Pindar says very well, that it was not mercenary in old
time, nor indeed is it so now; but by the baseness and ambition of a
few it is made use of to serve their poor secular interests. For if
the poets represent Venus herself as much offended with those who make
a trade and traffic of the passion of love, how much more reasonably
may we suppose that Urania and Clio and Calliope have an indignation
against those who set learning and philosophy to sale? Certainly the
gifts and endowments of the Muses ought to be privileged from such mean
considerations.

If indeed some have made fame and reputation one of the ends of their
studies, they used it only as an instrument to get friends; since we
find by common observation that men praise only those whom they love.
If they sought its own praise, they were as much mistaken as Ixion
when he embraced a cloud instead of Juno; for there is nothing so
fleeting, so changeable, and so inconstant as popular applause; it is
but a pompous shadow, and hath no manner of solidity and duration in
it. But a wise man, if he design to engage in business and matters of
state, will so far aim at fame and popularity as that he may be better
enabled to benefit others; for it is a difficult and very unpleasant
task to do good to those who are disaffected to our persons. It is the
good opinion men have of us which disposes men to give credit to our
doctrine. As light is a greater good to those who see others by it
than to those who only are seen, so is honor of a greater benefit to
those who behold it than to those whose glory is beheld. But even one
who withdraws himself from the noise of the world, who loves privacy
and indulges his own thoughts, will show that respect to the good word
of the people which Hippolytus did to Venus,—though he abstain from
her mysteries, he will pay his devotions at a distance;[202] but he
will not be so cynical and sullen as not to hear with gladness the
commendations of virtuous men like himself; he will neither engage
himself in a restless pursuit of wealth, interest, or honor, nor will
he on the other hand be so rustic and insensible as to refuse them in
a moderate degree, when they fairly come in his way; in like manner he
will not court and follow handsome and beautiful youth, but will rather
choose such as are of a teachable disposition, of a gentle behavior,
and lovers of learning. The charms and graces of youth will not make
a philosopher shy of their conversation, when the endowments of their
minds are answerable to the features of their bodies. The case is the
same when greatness of place and fortune concur with a well-disposed
mind in the same person; he will not therefore forbear loving and
respecting such a one, nor be afraid of the name of a courtier, nor
think it a curse that such attendance and dependence should be his fate.

They that strive most Dame Venus to eschew
Do fault as much as they who her pursue.[203]

The application is easy to the matter in hand.

A philosopher therefore, if he is of a retired humor, will not shun
such persons; while one who generously designs his studies for the
public advantage will cheerfully embrace their advances of friendship,
will not force them after a troublesome manner to hear him, will
lay aside his scholastical terms and distinctions, and will rejoice
to discourse and pass his time with them when they are willing and
disposed.

3. I plough the spacious Berecynthian fields,
Full six days’ journey wide,[204]

says one boastingly in the poet; the same man, if he were as much a
lover of mankind as of husbandry, would much rather bestow his pains on
such a farm, the fruits of which would serve a great number, than to
be always dressing the olive-yard of some cynical malecontent, which,
when all was done, would scarce yield oil enough to dress a salad or
to supply his lamp in the long winter evenings. Epicurus himself, who
places happiness in the profoundest quiet and sluggish inactivity, as
the only secure harbor from the storms of this troublesome world, could
not but confess that it is both more noble and delightful to do than to
receive a kindness;[205] for there is nothing which produces so humane
and genuine a sort of pleasure as that of doing good. He who first
gave the names to the three Graces well understood this, for they all
signify delectation and joy,[206] and these surely are far greater and
purer in him who does the good turn. This is so evidently true, that
we all receive good turns blushing and with some confusion, but we are
always gay and well pleased when we are conferring one.

If then it is so pleasant to do good to a few, how are their hearts
dilated with joy who are benefactors to whole cities, provinces, and
kingdoms? And such benefactors are they who instil good principles into
those upon whom so many millions do depend. On the other hand, those
who debauch the minds of great men—as sycophants, false informers, and
flatterers, worse than both, manifestly do—are the centre of all the
curses of a nation, as men who do not only infuse deadly poison into
the cistern of a private house, but into the public springs of which
so many thousands are to drink. The people therefore laughed at the
hangers-on of Callias, whom, as Eupolis says, neither fire nor brass
nor steel could keep from supping with him; but as for the favorites
of those execrable tyrants Apollodorus, Phalaris, and Dionysius, they
racked them, they flayed them alive, they roasted them at slow fires,
they looked on them as the very pests of society and disgraces of
human nature; for to debauch a simple person is indeed an ill thing,
but to corrupt a prince is an infinite mischief. In like manner, he
who instructs an ordinary man makes him to pass his life decently and
with comfort; but he who instructs a prince, by correcting his errors
and clearing his understanding, is a philosopher for the public, by
rectifying the very mould and model by which whole nations are formed
and regulated. It is the custom of all nations to pay a peculiar honor
and deference to their priests; and the reason of it is, because they
do not only pray for good things for themselves, their own families and
friends, but for whole communities, for the whole state of mankind.
Yet we are not so fond as to think that the priests cause the Gods to
be givers of good things, or inspire a vein of beneficence into them;
but they only make their supplications to a being which of itself is
inclinable to answer their requests. But in this a good tutor hath
the privilege above the priests,—he effectually renders a prince more
disposed to actions of justice, moderation, and mercy, and therefore
hath a greater satisfaction of mind when he reflects upon it.

4. For my own part, I cannot but think that an ordinary mechanic—for
instance, a maker of musical instruments—would be much more attentive
and pleased at his work, if he knew that his harp would be touched by
the famous Amphion, and in his hand serve for the builder of Thebes,
or if that Thales had bespoke it, who was so great a master that
by the force of his music he pacified a popular tumult amongst the
Lacedaemonians. A good-natured shipwright would ply his work more
heartily, if he were making the steerage for the admiral galley of
Themistocles when he fought for the liberty of Greece, or of Pompey
when he went on his expedition against the pirates: what ecstasy of
delight then must a philosopher be in, when he reflects that his
scholar is a man of authority, a prince or great potentate, that he is
employed in so public a work, giving laws to him who is to give laws to
a whole nation, who is to punish vice, and to reward the virtuous with
riches and honor? The builder of the Argo certainly would have been
mightily pleased, if he had known what noble mariners were to row in
his ship, and that at last she should be translated into heaven; and a
carpenter would not be half so much pleased to make a coach or plough,
as to make the tablets on which Solon’s laws were to be engraved. In
like manner the discourses and rules of philosophy, being once deeply
stamped and imprinted on the minds of great personages, will stick so
close, that the prince shall seem no other than justice incarnate and
animated law. This was the design of Plato’s voyage into Sicily,—he
hoped that the lectures of his philosophy would serve for laws to
Dionysius, and bring his affairs again into a good posture. But the
soul of that unfortunate prince was like paper scribbled all over with
the characters of vice; its piercing and corroding quality had stained
quite through, and sunk into the very substance of his soul. Whereas,
if such persons are to profit by sage lessons, they must be taken when
they are at full speed.

A DISCOURSE CONCERNING SOCRATES’S DAEMON.

CAPHISIAS, TIMOTHEUS, ARCHIDAMUS, CHILDREN OF ARCHINUS, LYSITHIDES,
OTHER COMPANIONS.

1. I heard lately, Caphisias, a neat saying of a painter, comprised in
a similitude upon those that came to view his pictures. For he said,
the ignorant and unskilful were like those that saluted a whole company
together, but the curious and knowing like those that complimented each
single person; for the former take no exact, but only one general view
of the performance; but those that with judgment examine part by part
take notice of every stroke that is either well or ill done in the
whole picture. The duller and lazy sort are abundantly satisfied with a
short account and upshot of any business. But he that is of a generous
and noble temper, that is fitted to be a spectator of virtue, as of a
curious piece of art, is more delighted with the particulars. For, upon
a general view, much of fortune is discovered; but when the particulars
are examined, then appear the art and contrivance, the boldness in
conquering intervening accidents, and the reason that was mixed with
and tempered the heat and fury of the undertakers. Suppose us to be
of this sort, and give us an account of the whole design, how from
the very beginning it was carried on, what company you kept, and what
particular discourse you had that day;—a thing so much desired, that
I protest I would willingly go to Thebes to be informed, did not the
Athenians already suspect me to lean too much to the Boeotian interest.

Caphisias. Indeed Archidamus, your kind eagerness after this
story is so obliging, that, putting myself above all business (as
Pindar says), I should have come on purpose to give you a relation.
But since I am now come upon an embassy, and have nothing to do until
I receive an answer to my memorial, to be uncivil and not to satisfy
the request of an obliging friend would revive the old reproach that
hath been cast upon the Boeotians for morose sullenness and hating good
discourse, a reproach which began to die in the time of Socrates. But
as for the rest of the company, pray sir, are they at leisure to hear
such a story?—for I must be very long, since you enjoin me to add the
particular discourses that passed between us.

Arch. You do not know the men, Caphisias, though they are
worthy your acquaintance; men of good families, and no enemies to
you. This is Lysithides, Thrasybulus’s nephew; this Timotheus, the
son of Conon; these Archinus’s sons; and all the rest my very good
acquaintance, so that you need not doubt a favorable and obliging
audience.

Caph. Very well; but where shall I begin the story? How much
of these affairs are you acquainted with already?

Arch. We know, Caphisias, how matters stood at Thebes before
the exiles returned,—how Archias, Leontidas, and their associates,
having persuaded Phoebidas the Spartan in the time of peace to surprise
that castle, banished some of the citizens, awed others, took the
power into their own hands, and tyrannized against all equity and
law. We understood Melon’s and Pelopidas’s designs, having (as you
know) entertained them, and having conversed with them ever since they
were banished. We knew likewise that the Spartans fined Phoebidas for
taking the Cadmea, and in their expedition to Olynthus cashiered
him; but sent a stronger garrison, under Lysinoridas and two more, to
command the castle; and further, that Ismenias presently after his
trial was basely murdered. For Gorgidas wrote constantly to the exiles,
and sent them all the news; so that you have nothing to do but only to
inform us in the particulars of your friends’ return and the seizing of
the tyrants.

2. Caph. In those days, Archidamus, all that were concerned
in the design, as often as our business required, used to meet at
Simmias’s house, who then lay lame of a blow upon his shin. This we
covered with a pretence of meeting for improvement and philosophical
discourse, and, to take off all suspicion, we many times invited
Archias and Leontidas, who were not altogether averse to such
conversation. Besides, Simmias, having been a long time abroad and
conversant with different nations, was lately returned to Thebes, full
of all sorts of stories and strange relations. To him Archias, when
free from business, would resort with the youth of Thebes, and sit and
hear with a great deal of delight; being better pleased to see us mind
philosophy and learning than their illegal actions. Now the same day in
which it was agreed that about night the exiles should come privately
to town, a messenger, whom none of us all but Charon knew, came from
them by Pherenicus’s order, and told us that twelve of the youngest of
the exiles were now hunting on the mountain Cithaeron, and designed
to come at night, and that he was sent to deliver this and to know in
whose house they should be received, that as soon as they entered they
might go directly thither. This startling us, Charon put an end to all
our doubts by offering to receive them in his house. With this answer
the messenger returned.

3. But Theocritus the soothsayer, grasping me by the hand, and looking
on Charon that went just before us, said: That Charon, Caphisias, is
no philosopher, nor so general nor so acute a scholar as thy brother
Epaminondas, and yet you see that, Nature leading him, under the
direction of the law, to noble actions, he willingly ventures on the
greatest danger for the benefit of his country; but Epaminondas, who
thinks he knows more of virtue than any of the Boeotians, is dull and
inactive; and though opportunity presents, though there cannot be a
fairer occasion, and though he is fitted to embrace it, yet he refuseth
to join, and will not make one in this generous attempt. And I replied:
Courageous Theocritus, we do what upon mature deliberation we have
approved, but Epaminondas, being of a contrary opinion and thinking it
better not to take this course, rationally complies with his judgment,
whilst he refuseth to meddle in those matters which his reason upon
our desire cannot approve, and to which his nature is averse. Nor can
I think it prudent to force a physician to use fire and a lancet, that
promiseth to cure the disease without them. What, said Theocritus, doth
he not approve of our method? No, I replied, he would have no citizens
put to death without a trial at law; but if we would endeavor to free
our country without slaughter and bloodshed, none would more readily
comply; but since we slight his reasons and follow our own course, he
desires to be excused, to be guiltless of the blood and slaughter of
his citizens, and to be permitted to watch an opportunity when he may
deliver his country according to equity and right. For this action
may go too far, Pherenicus, it is true, and Pelopidas may assault the
bad men and the oppressors of the people; but Eumolpidas and Samidas,
men of extraordinary heat and violence, prevailing in the night, will
hardly sheathe their swords until they have filled the whole city with
slaughter and cut in pieces many of the chief men.

4. Anaxidorus, overhearing this discourse of mine to Theocritus (for
he was just by), bade us be cautious, for Archias with Lysanoridas the
Spartan were coming from the castle directly towards us. Upon this
advice we left off; and Archias, calling Theocritus aside together with
Lysanoridas, privately discoursed him a long while, so that we were
very much afraid lest they had some suspicion or notice of our design,
and examined Theocritus about it. In the mean time Phyllidas (you know
him, Archidamus) who was then secretary to Archias the general, who
knew of the exiles coming and was one of the associates, taking me
by the hand, as he used to do, before the company, found fault with
the late exercises and wrestling he had seen; but afterwards leading
me aside, he enquired after the exiles, and asked whether they were
resolved to be punctual to the day. And upon my assuring that they
were, then he replied, I have very luckily provided a feast to-day to
treat Archias, make him drunk, and then deliver him an easy prey to
the invaders. Excellently contrived, Phyllidas, said I, and prithee
endeavor to draw all or most of our enemies together. That, said he, is
very hard, nay, rather impossible; for Archias, being in hopes of the
company of some noble women there, will not yield that Leontidas should
be present, so that it will be necessary to divide the associates into
two companies, that we may surprise both the houses. For, Archias and
Leontidas being taken off, I suppose the others will presently fly,
or staying make no stir, being very well satisfied if they can be
permitted to be safe and quiet. So, said I, we will order it; but about
what, I wonder, are they discoursing with Theocritus? And Phyllidas
replied, I cannot certainly tell, but I have heard that some omens and
oracles portend great disasters and calamities to Sparta; and perhaps
they consult him about those matters. Theocritus had just left them,
when Phidolaus the Haliartian meeting us said: Simmias would have you
stay here a little while, for he is interceding with Leontidas for
Amphitheus, and begs that instead of dying, according to the sentence,
he may be banished.

5. Well, said Theocritus, this happens very opportunely, for I had
a mind to ask what was seen and what found in Alcmena’s tomb lately
opened amongst you, for perhaps, sir, you were present when Agesilaus
sent to fetch the relics to Sparta. And Phidolaus replied: Indeed I
was not present at the opening of the grave, for I was not delegated,
being extremely concerned and very angry with my fellow-citizens
for permitting it to be done. There were found no relics of a body;
but a small brazen bracelet, and two earthen pipkins full of earth,
which now by length of time was grown very hard and petrified. Upon
the monument there was a brazen plate full of strange, because very
ancient, letters; for though, when the plate was washed, all the
strokes were very easily perceived, yet nobody could make any thing
of them; for they were a particular, barbarous, and very like the
Egyptian character. And therefore Agesilaus, as the story goes, sent
a transcript of them to the king of Egypt, desiring him to show them
to the priests, and if they understood them, to send him the meaning
and interpretation. But perhaps in this matter Simmias can inform us,
for at that time he studied their philosophy and frequently conversed
with the priests upon that account. The Haliartii believe the great
scarcity and overflowing of the pool that followed were not effects of
chance, but a particular judgment upon them for permitting the grave
to be opened. And Theocritus, after a little pause, said: Nay, there
seem some judgments to hang over the Lacedaemonians themselves, as
those omens about which Lysanoridas just now discoursed me portend.
And now he is gone to Haliartus to fill up the grave again, and, as
the oracle directs, to make some oblations to Alcmena and Aleus; but
who this Aleus is, he cannot tell. And as soon as he returns, he must
endeavor to find the sepulchre of Dirce, which not one of the Thebans
themselves, besides the captains of the horse, knows; for he that goes
out of his office leads his successor to the place alone, and in the
dark; there they offer some sacrifices, but without fire, and leaving
no mark behind them, they separate from one another, and come home
again in the dark. So that I believe, Phidolaus, it will be no easy
matter for him to discover it. For most of those that have been duly
elected to that office are now in exile; nay, all besides Gorgidas and
Plato; and they will never ask those, for they are afraid of them. And
our present officers are invested in the castle with the spear only and
the seal, but know nothing of the tomb, and cannot direct him.

6. Whilst Theocritus was speaking, Leontidas and his friends went out;
and we going in saluted Simmias, sitting upon his couch, very much
troubled because his petition was denied. He, looking up upon us,
cried out: Good God! The savage barbarity of these men! And was it not
an excellent remark of Thales, who, when his friends asked him, upon
his return from his long travels, what strange news he brought home,
replied, “I have seen a tyrant an old man.” For even he that hath
received no particular injury, yet disliking their stiff pride and
haughty carriage, becomes an enemy to all lawless and unaccountable
powers. But Heaven perhaps will take these things into consideration.
But, Caphisias, do you know that stranger that came lately hither,
who he is? And I replied, I do not know whom you mean. Why, said he,
Leontidas told me that there was a man at night seen to rise out of
Lysis’s tomb, with great pomp and a long train of attendants, and that
he had lodged there all night upon beds made of leaves and boughs; for
the next morning such were discovered there, with some relics of burnt
sacrifices and some milk-oblations; and that in the morning he enquired
of every one he met, whether he should find Polymnis’s sons at home. I
wonder, said I, who it is, for by your description I guess him to be no
mean man.

7. Well, said Phidolaus, when he comes we will entertain him; but at
the present, Simmias, if you know any thing more of those letters
about which we were talking, pray let us have it; for it is said that
the Egyptian priests took into consideration the writing of a certain
table which Agesilaus had from us when he opened Alcmena’s tomb. As for
the table, replied Simmias, I know nothing of it; but Agetoridas the
Spartan came to Memphis with letters from Agesilaus to Chonouphis the
priest, whilst I, Plato, and Ellopio the Peparethian, studied together
at his house. He came by order of the king, who enjoined Chonouphis,
if he understood the writing, to send him the interpretation with all
speed. And he in three days’ study, having collected all the different
sorts of characters that could be found in the old books, wrote back
to the king and likewise told us, that the writing enjoined the Greeks
to institute games in honor of the Muses; that the characters were
such as were used in the time of Proteus, and that Hercules, the son
of Amphitryo, then learned them; and that the Gods by this admonished
the Greeks to live peaceably and at quiet, to contend in philosophy
to the honor of the Muses, and, laying aside their arms, to determine
what is right and just by reason and discourse. We then thought that
Chonouphis spoke right; and that opinion was confirmed when, as we were
sailing from Egypt, about Caria some Delians met us, who desired Plato,
being well skilled in geometry, to solve an odd oracle lately delivered
by Apollo. The oracle was this: “Then the Delians and all the other
Greeks should enjoy some respite from their present evils, when they
had doubled the altar at Delos.” They, not comprehending the meaning
of the words, after many ridiculous endeavors (for each of the sides
being doubled, they had framed a body, instead of twice, eight times
as big) made application to Plato to clear the difficulty. He, calling
to mind what the Egyptian had told him, said that the God was merry
upon the Greeks, who despised learning; that he severely reflected on
their ignorance, and admonished them to apply themselves to the deepest
parts of geometry; for this was not to be done by a dull short-sighted
intellect, but one exactly skilled in the natures and properties of
lines; it required skill to find the true proportion by which alone a
body of a cubic figure can be doubled, all its dimensions being equally
increased. He said that Eudoxus the Cnidian or Helico the Cyzicenian
might do this for them; but that was not the thing desired by the God;
for by this oracle he enjoined all the Greeks to leave off war and
contention, and apply themselves to study, and, by learning and arts
moderating the passions, to live peaceably with one another, and profit
the community.

8. Whilst Simmias was speaking, my father Polymnis came in, and sitting
down by him said: Epaminondas desires you and the rest of the company,
unless some urgent business requires your attendance, to stay for
him here a little while, designing to bring you acquainted with this
stranger, who is a very worthy man; and the design upon which he comes
is very genteel and honorable. He is a Pythagorean of the Italian sect,
and comes hither to make some offerings to old Lysis at his tomb,
according to divers dreams and very notable appearances that he hath
seen. He hath brought a good sum of money with him, and thinks himself
bound to satisfy Epaminondas for keeping Lysis in his old age; and is
very eager, though we are neither willing nor desire him, to relieve
his poverty. And Simmias, glad at this news, replied: You tell me,
sir, of a wonderful man and worthy professor of philosophy; but why
doth he not come directly to us? I think, said my father, he lay all
night at Lysis’s tomb; and therefore Epaminondas hath now led him to
the Ismenus to wash; and when that is done, they will be here. For
before he came to our house, he lodged at the tomb, intending to take
up the relics of the body and transport them into Italy, if some genius
at night should not advise him to forbear.

9. As soon as my father had ended this discourse, Galaxidorus cried
out: Good Gods! how hard a matter is it to find a man pure from vanity
and superstition! For some are betrayed into those fooleries by their
ignorance and weakness; others, that they may be thought extraordinary
men and favorites of Heaven, refer all their actions to some divine
admonition pretending dreams, visions, and the like surprising
fooleries for every thing they do. This method indeed is advantageous
to those that intend to settle a commonwealth, or are forced to keep
themselves up against a rude and ungovernable multitude; for by this
bridle of superstition they might manage and reform the vulgar; but
these pretences seem not only unbecoming philosophy, but quite opposite
to all those fine promises she makes. For having promised to teach us
by reason what is good and profitable, falling back again to the Gods
as the principle of all our actions, she seems to despise reason, and
disgrace that demonstration which is her peculiar glory; and she relies
on dreams and visions, in which the worst of men are oftentimes as
happy as the best. And therefore your Socrates, Simmias, in my opinion
followed the most philosophical and rational method of instructions,
choosing that plain and easy way as the most genteel and friendly unto
truth, and scattering to the sophisters of the age all those vain
pretences which are as it were the smoke of philosophy. And Theocritus
taking him up said: What, Galaxidorus, and hath Meletus persuaded you
that Socrates contemned all divine things?—for that was part of his
accusation. Divine things! by no means, replied Galaxidorus; but having
received philosophy from Pythagoras and Empedocles, full of dreams,
fables, superstitions, and perfect raving, he endeavored to bring
wisdom and things together, and make truth consist with sober sense.

10. Be it so, rejoined Theocritus, but what shall we think of his
Daemon? Was it a mere juggle? Indeed, nothing that is told of
Pythagoras regarding divination seems to me so great and divine.
For, in my mind, as Homer makes Minerva to stand by Ulysses in all
dangers, so the Daemon joined to Socrates even from his cradle some
vision to guide him in all the actions of his life; which going before
him, shed a light upon hidden and obscure matters and such as could
not be discovered by unassisted human understanding; of such things
the Daemon often discoursed with him, presiding over and by divine
instinct directing his intentions. More and greater things perhaps
you may learn from Simmias and other companions of Socrates; but once
when I was present, as I went to Euthyphron the soothsayer’s, it
happened, Simmias,—for you remember it,—that Socrates walked up to
Symbolum and the house of Andocides, all the way asking questions and
jocosely perplexing Euthyphron. When standing still upon a sudden and
persuading us to do the like, he mused a pretty while, and then turning
about walked through Trunk-makers’ Street, calling back his friends
that walked before him, affirming that it was his Daemon’s will and
admonition. Many turned back, amongst whom I, holding Euthyphron, was
one; but some of the youths keeping on the straight way, on purpose (as
it were) to confute Socrates’s Daemon, took along with them Charillus
the piper, who came in my company to Athens to see Cebes. Now as they
were walking through Gravers’ Row, near the court-houses, a herd of
dirty swine met them; and being too many for the street and running
against one another, they overthrew some that could not get out of
the way, and dirted others; and Charillus came home with his legs and
clothes very dirty; so that now and then in merriment they would think
on Socrates’s Daemon, wondering that it never forsook the man, and that
Heaven took such particular care of him.

11. Then Galaxidorus: And do you think, Theocritus, that Socrates’s
Daemon had some peculiar and extraordinary power? And was it not that
this man had by experience confirmed some part of the common necessity
which made him, in all obscure and inevident matters, add some weight
to the reason that was on one side? For as one grain doth not incline
the balance by itself, yet added to one of two weights that are of
equal poise, makes the whole incline to that part; thus an omen or
the like sign may of itself be too light to draw a grave and settled
resolution to any action, yet when two equal reasons draw on either
side, if that is added to one, the doubt together with the equality is
taken off, so that a motion and inclination to that side is presently
produced. Then my father continuing the discourse said: You yourself,
Galaxidorus, have heard a Megarian, who had it from Terpsion, say that
Socrates’s Daemon was nothing else but the sneezing either of himself
or others; for if another sneezed, either before, behind him, or on his
right hand, then he pursued his design and went on to action; but if on
the left hand, he desisted. One sort of sneezing confirmed him whilst
deliberating and not fully resolved; another stopped him when already
upon action. But indeed it seems strange that, if sneezing was his only
sign, he should not acquaint his familiars with it, but pretend that
it was a Daemon that encouraged or forbade him. For that this should
proceed from vanity or conceit is not agreeable to the veracity and
simplicity of the man; for in those we knew him to be truly great,
and far above the generality of mankind. Nor is it likely so grave
and wise a man should be disturbed at a casual sound or sneezing,
and upon that account leave off what he was about, and give over his
premeditated resolutions. Besides all, Socrates’s resolution seems
to be altogether vigorous and steady, as begun upon right principles
and mature judgment. Thus he voluntarily lived poor all his life,
though he had friends that would have been very glad and very willing
to relieve him; he still kept close to philosophy, notwithstanding
all the discouragements he met with; and at last, when his friends
endeavored and very ingeniously contrived his escape, he would not
yield to their entreaties, but met death with mirth and cheerfulness,
and appeared a man of a steady reason in the greatest extremity. And
sure these are not the actions of a man whose designs, when once fixed,
could be altered by an omen or a sneeze; but of one who, by some more
considerable guidance and impulse, is directed to practise things
good and excellent. Besides, I have heard that to some of his friends
he foretold the overthrow of the Athenians in Sicily. And before
that time, Perilampes the son of Antiphon, being wounded and taken
prisoner by us in that pursuit at Delium, as soon as he heard from the
ambassadors who came from Athens that Socrates with Alcibiades and
Laches fled by Rhegiste and returned safe, blamed himself very much,
and blamed also some of his friends and captains of the companies—who
together with him were overtaken in their flight about Parnes by
our cavalry and slain there—for not obeying Socrates’s Daemon and
retreating that way which he led. And this I believe Simmias hath heard
as well as I. Yes, replied Simmias, many times, and from many persons;
for upon this, Socrates’s Daemon was very much talked of at Athens.

12. Why then, pray, Simmias, said Phidolaus, shall we suffer
Galaxidorus drollingly to degrade so considerable a prophetic spirit
into an omen or a sneeze; which the vulgar and ignorant, it is true,
merrily use about small matters; but when any danger appears, then we
find that of Euripides verified,—

None near the edge of swords will mind such toys.[207]

To this Galaxidorus rejoined: Sir, if Simmias hath heard Socrates
himself speak any thing about this matter, I am very ready to hear and
believe it with you; but yet what you and Polymnis have delivered I
could easily demonstrate to be weak and insignificant. For as in physic
the pulse or a whelk is itself but a small thing, yet is a sign of no
small things to the physicians; and as the murmuring of the waves or
of a bird, or the driving of a thin cloud, is a sign to the pilot of a
stormy heaven and troubled sea; thus to a prophetic soul, a sneeze or
an omen, though no great matter simply considered in itself, yet may be
the sign and token of considerable impending accidents. For every art
and science takes care to collect many things from few, and great from
small. And as if one that doth not know the power of letters, when he
sees a few ill-shapen strokes, should not believe that a man skilled in
letters could read in them the famous battles of the ancients, the rise
of cities, the acts and calamities of kings, and should assert that
some divine power told him the particulars, he would by this ignorance
of his raise a great deal of mirth and laughter in the company; so
let us consider whether or no we ourselves, being altogether ignorant
of every one’s power of divination by which he guesseth at what is to
come, are not foolishly concerned when it is asserted that a wise man
by that discovers some things obscure and inevident in themselves,
and moreover himself declares that it is not a sneeze or voice, but
a Daemon, that leads him on to action. This, Polymnis, particularly
respects you, who cannot but wonder that Socrates, who by his meekness
and humility hath humanized philosophy, should not call this sign
a sneeze or a voice, but very pretendingly a Daemon; when, on the
contrary, I should have wondered if a man so critical and exact in
discourse, and so good at names as Socrates, should have said that it
was a sneeze, and not a Daemon, that gave him intimation; as much as if
any one should say that he is wounded by a dart, and not with a dart
by him that threw it; or as if any one should say that a weight was
weighed by the balance, and not with the balance by the one who holds
it. For any effect is not the effect of the instrument, but of him
whose the instrument is, and who useth it to that effect; and a sign is
an instrument, which he that signifies any thing thereby useth to that
effect. But, as I said before, if Simmias hath any thing about this
matter, let us quietly attend; for no doubt he must have a more perfect
knowledge of the thing.

13. Content, said Theocritus; but let us first see who these are that
are coming, for I think I see Epaminondas bringing in the stranger.
Upon this motion, looking toward the door, we saw Epaminondas with his
friends Ismenidorus and Bacchylidas and Melissus the musician leading
the way, and the stranger following, a man of no mean presence; his
meekness and good-nature appeared in his looks, and his dress was
grave and becoming. He being seated next Simmias, my brother next me,
and the rest as they pleased, and all silent, Simmias speaking to my
brother said: Well, Epaminondas, by what name and title must I salute
this stranger?—for those are commonly our first compliments, and the
beginning of our better acquaintance. And my brother replied: His name,
Simmias, is Theanor; by birth he is a Crotonian, a philosopher by
profession, no disgrace to Pythagoras’s fame; for he hath taken a long
voyage from Italy hither, to evidence by generous actions his eminent
proficiency in that school.

The stranger subjoined: But you, Epaminondas, hinder the performance
of the best action; for if it is commendable to oblige friends, it is
not discommendable to be obliged; for a benefit requires a receiver
as well as a giver; by both it is perfected, and becomes a good work.
For he that refuseth to receive a favor, as a ball that is struck
fairly to him, disgraceth it by letting it fall short of the designed
mark; and what mark are we so much pleased to hit or vexed to miss,
as our kind intentions of obliging a person that deserves a favor? It
is true, when the mark is fixed, he that misseth can blame nobody but
himself; but he that refuseth or flies a kindness is injurious to the
favor in not letting it attain the desired end. I have told you already
what was the occasion of my voyage; the same I would discover to all
present, and make them judges in the case. For after the opposite
faction had expelled the Pythagoreans, and the Cylonians had burned the
remains of that society in their school at Metapontum, and destroyed
all but Philolaus and Lysis,—who being young and nimble escaped the
flame,—Philolaus flying to the Lucanians was there protected by his
friends, who rose for his defence and overpowered the Cylonians; but
where Lysis was, for a long time nobody could tell; at last Gorgias the
Leontine, sailing from Greece to Italy, seriously told Arcesus that he
met and discoursed Lysis at Thebes. Arcesus, being very desirous to
see the man, as soon as he could get a passage, designed to put to sea
himself; but age and weakness coming on, he took care that Lysis should
be brought to Italy alive, if possible; but if not, the relics of his
body. The intervening wars, usurpations, and seditions hindered his
friends from doing it whilst he lived; but since his death, Lysis’s
Daemon hath made very frequent and very plain discoveries to us of his
death; and many that were very well acquainted with the matter have
told us how courteously you received and civilly entertained him, how
in your poor family he was allowed a plentiful subsistence for his age,
counted a father of your sons, and died in peace. I therefore, although
a young man and but one single person, have been sent by many who are
my elders, and who, having store of money, offer it gladly to you who
need it, in return for the gracious friendship bestowed upon Lysis.
Lysis, it is true, is buried nobly, and your respect, which is more
honorable than a monument, must be acknowledged and requited by his
familiars and his friends.

14. When the stranger had said this, my father wept a considerable
time, in memory of Lysis; but my brother, smiling upon me, as he used
to do, said: What do we do, Caphisias? Are we to give up our poverty
to wealth, and yet be silent? By no means, I replied, let us part with
our old friend and the excellent breeder of our youth; but defend
her cause, for you are to manage it. My dear father, said he, I have
never feared that wealth would take possession of our house, except
on account of Caphisias’s body; for that wants fine attire, that he
may appear gay and gaudy to his numerous company of lovers, and great
supplies of food, that he may be strong to endure wrestling and other
exercises of the ring. But since he doth not give up poverty, since
he holds fast his hereditary want, like a color, since he, a youth,
prides himself in frugality, and is very well content with his present
state, what need have we, and what shall we do with wealth? Shall we
gild our arms? Shall we, like Nicias the Athenian, adorn our shield
with gold, purple, and other gaudy variety of colors, and buy for you,
sir, a Milesian cloak, and for my mother a purple gown? For I suppose
we shall not consume any upon our belly, or feast more sumptuously
than we did before, treating this wealth as a guest of quality and
honor! Away, away, son, replied my father; let me never see such a
change in our course of living. Well, said my brother, we would not
lie lazily at home, and watch over our unemployed riches; for then the
bestower’s kindness would be a trouble, and the possession infamous.
What need then, said my father, have we of wealth? Upon this account,
said Epaminondas, when Jason, the Thessalian general, lately sent me a
great sum of money and desired me to accept it, I was thought rude and
unmannerly for telling him that he was a knave for endeavoring, whilst
he himself loved monarchy, to bribe one of democratical principles
and a member of a free state. Your good will, sir (addressing the
stranger), which is generous and worthy a philosopher, I accept and
passionately admire; but you offer physic to your friends who are
in perfect health! If, upon a report that we were distressed and
overpowered, you had brought men and arms to our assistance, but being
arrived had found all in quietness and peace, I am certain you would
not have thought it necessary to leave those supplies which we did not
then stand in need of. Thus, since now you came to assist us against
poverty as if we had been distressed by it, and find it very peaceable
and our familiar inmate, there is no need to leave any money or arms to
suppress that which gives us no trouble or disturbance. But tell your
acquaintance that they use riches well, and have friends here that use
poverty as well. What was spent in keeping and burying Lysis, Lysis
himself hath sufficiently repaid, by many profitable instructions, and
by teaching us not to think poverty a grievance.

15. What then, said Theanor, is it mean to think poverty a grievance?
Is it not absurd to fly and be afraid of riches, if no reason, but
an hypocritical pretence, narrowness of mind, or pride, prompts one
to reject the offer? And what reason, I wonder, would refuse such
advantageous and creditable enjoyments as Epaminondas now doth? But,
sir,—for your answer to the Thessalian about this matter shows you very
ready,—pray answer me, do you think it commendable in some cases to
give money, but always unlawful to receive it? Or are the givers and
receivers equally guilty of a fault? By no means, replied Epaminondas;
but, as of any thing else, so the giving and receiving of money is
sometimes commendable and sometimes base. Well then, said Theanor,
if a man, gives willingly what he ought to give, is not that action
commendable in him? Yes. And when it is commendable in one to give, is
it not as commendable in another to receive? Or can a man more honestly
accept a gift from any one, than from him that honestly bestows? No.
Well then, Epaminondas, suppose of two friends, one hath a mind to
present, the other must accept. It is true, in a battle we should avoid
that enemy who is skilful in hurling his weapon; but in civilities
we should neither fly nor thrust back that friend that makes a kind
and genteel offer. And though poverty is not so grievous, yet on the
other side, wealth is not so mean and despicable a thing. Very true,
replied Epaminondas; but you must consider that sometimes, even when a
gift is honestly bestowed, he is more commendable who refuses it. For
we have many lusts and desires, and the objects of those desires are
many. Some are called natural; these proceed from the very constitution
of our body, and tend to natural pleasures; others are acquired,
and rise from vain opinions and mistaken notions; yet these by the
length of time, ill habits, and bad education are usually improved,
get strength, and debase the soul more than the other natural and
necessary passions. By custom and care any one, with the assistance of
reason, may free himself from many of his natural desires. But, sir,
all our arts, all our force of discipline, must be employed against
the superfluous and acquired appetites; and they must be restrained
or cut off by the guidance or edge of reason. For if the contrary
applications of reason can make us forbear meat and drink, when
hungry or thirsty, how much more easy is it to conquer covetousness
or ambition, which will be destroyed by a bare restraint from their
proper objects, and a non-attainment of their desired end? And pray,
sir, are you not of the same opinion? Yes, replied the stranger. Then,
sir, continued Epaminondas, do you not perceive a difference between
the exercise itself and the work to which the exercise relates? For
instance, in a wrestler, the work is the striving with his adversary
for the crown, the exercise is the preparation of his body by diet,
wrestling, or the like. So in virtue, you must confess the work to be
one thing and the exercise another. Very well, replied the stranger.
Then, continued Epaminondas, let us first examine whether to abstain
from the base unlawful pleasures is the exercise of continence, or the
work and evidence of that exercise? The work and evidence, replied the
stranger. But is not the exercise of it such as you practise, when
after wrestling, where you have raised your appetites like ravenous
beasts, you stand a long while at a table covered with plenty and
variety of meats, and then give it to your servants to feast on, whilst
you offer mean and spare diet to your subdued appetites? For abstinence
from lawful pleasure is exercise against unlawful. Very well, replied
the stranger. So, continued Epaminondas, justice is exercise against
covetousness and love of money; but so is not a mere cessation from
stealing or robbing our neighbor. So he that doth not betray his
country or friends for gold doth not exercise against covetousness, for
the law perhaps deters, and fear restrains him; but he that refuseth
just gain and such as the law allows, voluntarily exercises, and
secures himself from being bribed or receiving any unlawful present.
For when great, hurtful, and base pleasures are proposed, it is very
hard for any one to contain himself, who hath not often despised those
which he had power and opportunity to enjoy. Thus, when base bribes and
considerable advantages are offered, it will be difficult to refuse,
unless he hath long ago rooted out all thoughts of gain and love of
money; for other desires will nourish and increase that appetite, and
he will easily be drawn to any unjust action who can scarce forbear
reaching out his hand to a proffered present. But he that will not
lay himself open to the favors of friends and the gifts of kings, but
refuseth even what Fortune proffers, and keeps off his appetite, that
is eager after and (as it were) leaps forward to an appearing treasure,
is never disturbed or tempted to unlawful actions, but hath great and
brave thoughts, and hath command over himself, being conscious of none
but generous designs. I and Caphisias, dear Simmias, being passionate
admirers of such men, beg the stranger to suffer us to be taught and
exercised by poverty to attain that height of virtue and perfection.

16. My brother having finished this discourse, Simmias, nodding twice
or thrice, said: Epaminondas is a great man, but this Polymnis is the
cause of his greatness, who gave his children the best education, and
bred them philosophers. But, sir, you may end this dispute at leisure
among yourselves. As for Lysis (if it is lawful to discover it), pray,
sir, do you design to take him out of his tomb and transport him into
Italy, or leave him here amongst his friends and acquaintance, who
shall be glad to lie by him in the grave? And Theanor with a smile
answered: Lysis, good Simmias, no doubt is very well pleased with the
place, for Epaminondas supplied him with all things necessary and
fitting. But the Pythagoreans have some particular funeral ceremonies,
which if any one wants, we conclude he did not make a proper and
happy exit. Therefore, as soon as we learned from some dreams that
Lysis was dead (for we have certain marks to know the apparitions of
the living from images of the dead), most began to think that Lysis,
dying in a strange country, was not interred with the due ceremonies,
and therefore ought to be removed to Italy that he might receive them
there. I coming upon this design, and being by the people of the
country directed to the tomb, in the evening poured out my oblations,
and called upon the soul of Lysis to come out and direct me in this
affair. The night drawing on, I saw nothing indeed, but thought I heard
a voice saying: Move not those relics that ought not to be moved, for
Lysis’s body was duly and religiously interred; and his soul is sent
to inform another body, and committed to the care of another Daemon.
And early this morning, asking Epaminondas about the manner of Lysis’s
burial, I found that Lysis had taught him as far as the incommunicable
mysteries of our sect; and that the same Daemon that waited on Lysis
presided over him, if I can guess at the pilot from the sailing of
the ship. The paths of life are large, but in few are men directed
by the Daemons. When Theanor had said this, he looked attentively on
Epaminondas, as if he designed a fresh search into his nature and
inclinations.

17. At the same instant the chirurgeon coming in unbound Simmias’s leg
and prepared to dress it; and Phyllidas entering with Hipposthenides,
extremely concerned, as his very countenance discovered, desired me,
Charon, and Theocritus to withdraw into a private corner of the porch.
And I asking, Phyllidas, hath any new thing happened?—Nothing new to
me, he replied, for I knew and told you that Hipposthenides was a
coward, and therefore begged you not to communicate the matter to him
or make him an associate. We seeming all surprised, Hipposthenides
cried out: For Heaven’s sake, Phyllidas, don’t say so, don’t think
rashness to be bravery, and blinded by that mistake ruin both us and
the commonwealth; but, if it must be so, let the exiles return again in
peace. And Phyllidas in a passion replied, How many, Hipposthenides,
do you think are privy to this design? Thirty I know engaged. And why
then, continued Phyllidas, would you singly oppose your judgment to
them all, and ruin those measures they have all taken and agreed to?
What had you to do to send a messenger to desire them to return and not
approach to-day, when even chance encouraged and all things conspired
to promote the design?

These words of Phyllidas troubled every one; and Charon, looking
very angrily upon Hipposthenides, said: Thou coward! what hast thou
done? No harm, replied Hipposthenides, as I will make appear if you
will moderate your passion and hear what your gray-headed equal can
allege. If, Phyllidas, we were minded to show our citizens a bravery
that sought danger, and a heart that contemned life, there is day
enough before us; why should we wait till the evening? Let us take
our swords presently, and assault the tyrants. Let us kill, let us be
killed, and be prodigal of our blood. If this may be easily performed
or endured, and if it is no easy matter by the loss of two or three
men to free Thebes from so great an armed power as possesses it, and
to beat out the Spartan garrison,—for I suppose Phyllidas hath not
provided wine enough at his entertainment to make all Archias’s guard
of fifteen hundred men drunk; or if we despatch him, yet Arcesus and
Herippidas will be sober, and upon the watch,—why are we so eager to
bring our friends and families into certain destruction, especially
since the enemy hath some notice of their return? For why else should
the Thespians for these three days be commanded to be in arms and
follow the orders of the Spartan general? And I hear that to-day,
after examination before Archias when he returns, they design to
put Amphitheus to death; and are not these strong proofs that our
conspiracy is discovered? Is it not the best way to stay a little,
until an atonement is made and the Gods reconciled? For the diviners,
having sacrificed an ox to Ceres, said that the burnt offering
portended a great sedition and danger to the commonwealth. And besides,
Charon, there is another thing which particularly concerns you; for
yesterday Hypatodorus, the son of Erianthes, a very honest man and my
good acquaintance, but altogether ignorant of our design, coming out of
the country in my company, accosted me thus: Charon is an acquaintance
of yours, Hipposthenides, but no great crony of mine; yet, if you
please, advise him to take heed of some imminent danger, for I had a
very odd dream relating to some such matter. Last night methought I
saw his house in travail; and he and his friends, extremely perplexed,
fell to their prayers round about the house. The house groaned, and
sent out some inarticulate sounds; at last a raging fire broke out of
it, and consumed the greatest part of the city; and the castle Cadmea
was covered all over with smoke, but not fired. This was the dream,
Charon, that he told me. I was startled at the present, and that fear
increased when I heard that the exiles intended to come to-day to your
house, and I am very much afraid that we shall bring mighty mischiefs
on ourselves, yet do our enemies no proportionable harm, but only give
them a little disturbance; for I think the city signifies us, and the
castle (as it is now in their power) them.

18. Then Theocritus putting in, and enjoining silence on Charon, who
was eager to reply, said: As for my part, Hipposthenides, though all
my sacrifices were of good omen to the exiles, yet I never found any
greater inducement to go on than the dream you mentioned; for you say
that a great and bright fire, rising out of a friend’s house, caught
the city, and that the habitation of the enemies was blackened with
smoke, which never brings any thing better than tears and disturbance;
that inarticulate sounds broke out from us shows that none shall make
any clear and full discovery; only a blind suspicion shall arise, and
our design shall appear and have its desired effect at the same time.
And it is very natural that the diviners should find the sacrifices
ill-omened; for both their office and their victims belong not to the
public, but to the men in power. Whilst Theocritus was speaking, I
said to Hipposthenides, Whom did you send with this message? for if it
was not long ago, we will follow him. Indeed, Caphisias, he replied,
it is unlikely (for I must tell the truth) that you should overtake
him, for he is upon the best horse in Thebes. You all know the man,
he is master of the horse to Melon, and Melon from the very beginning
hath made him privy to the design. And I, observing him to be at the
door, said: What, Hipposthenides, is it Clido, he that last year at
Juno’s feast won the single horse-race? Yes, the very same. Who then,
continued I, is he that hath stood a pretty while at the court-gate and
gazed upon us? At this Hipposthenides turning about cried out: Clido,
by Hercules! I’ll lay my life some unlucky accident hath happened.
Clido, observing that we took notice of him, came softly from the gate
towards us; and Hipposthenides giving him a nod and bidding him deliver
his message to the company, for they were all sure friends and privy
to the whole plot, he began: Sir, I know the men very well, and not
finding you either at home or in the market-place, I guessed you were
with them, and came directly hither to give you a full account of the
present posture of affairs. You commanded me with all possible speed
to meet the exiles upon the mountain, and accordingly I went home to
take horse, and called for my bridle; my wife said it was mislaid,
and stayed a long time in the hostry, tumbling about the things and
pretending to look carefully after it; at last, when she had tired my
patience, she confessed that her neighbor’s wife had borrowed it last
night; this raised my passion and I chid her, and she began to curse,
and wished me a bad journey and as bad a return; all which curses, pray
God, may fall upon her own head. At last my passion grew high, and I
began to cudgel her, and presently the neighbors and women coming in,
there was fine work; I am so bruised that it was as much as I could do
to come hither to desire you to employ another man, for I protest I am
amazed and in a very bad condition.

19. Upon this news we were strangely altered. Just before we were
angry with the man that endeavored to put it off; and now the time
approaching, the very minute just upon us, and it being impossible to
defer the matter, we found ourselves in great anxiety and perplexity.
But I, speaking to Hipposthenides and taking him by the hand, bade
him be of good courage, for the Gods themselves seemed to invite us
to action. Presently we parted. Phyllidas went home to prepare his
entertainment, and to make Archias drunk as soon as conveniently
he could; Charon went to his house to receive the exiles; and I
and Theocritus went back to Simmias again, that having now a good
opportunity, we might discourse with Epaminondas.

20. We found them engaged in a notable dispute, which Galaxidorus and
Phidolaus had touched upon before; the subject of the enquiry was
this,—What kind of substance or power was the famed Daemon of Socrates?
Simmias’s reply to Galaxidorus’s discourse we did not hear; but he
said that, having once asked Socrates about it and received no answer,
he never repeated the same question; but he had often heard him
declare those to be vain pretenders who said they had seen any divine
apparition, while to those who affirmed that they heard a voice he
would gladly hearken, and would eagerly enquire into the particulars.
And this upon consideration gave us probable reasons to conjecture that
this Daemon of Socrates was not an apparition, but rather a sensible
perception of a voice, or an apprehension of some words, which after
an unaccountable manner affected him; as in a dream there is no real
voice, yet we have fancies and apprehensions of words which make us
imagine that we hear some speak. This perception in dreams is usual,
because the body whilst we are asleep is quiet and undisturbed; but
when we are awake, meaner thoughts creep in, and we can hardly bring
our souls to observe better advertisements. For being in a hurry of
tumultuous passions and distracting business, we cannot compose our
mind or make it listen to the discoveries. But Socrates’s understanding
being pure, free from passion, and mixing itself with the body no
more than necessity required, was easy to be moved and apt to take an
impression from every thing that was applied to it; now that which was
applied was not a voice, but more probably a declaration of a Daemon,
by which the very thing that it would declare was immediately and
without audible voice represented to his mind. Voice is like a stroke
given to the soul, which receives speech forcibly entering at the ears
whilst we discourse; but the understanding of a more excellent nature
affects a capable soul, by applying the very thing to be understood to
it, so that there is no need of another stroke. And the soul obeys,
as it stretches or slackens her affections, not forcibly, as if it
wrought by contrary passions, but smoothly and gently, as if it moved
flexible and loose reins. And sure nobody can wonder at this, that hath
observed what great ships of burden are turned by a small helm, or seen
a potter’s wheel move round by the gentle touch of one finger. These
are lifeless things, it is true; but being of a frame fit for motion,
by reason of their smoothness, they yield to the least impulse. The
soul of man, being stretched with a thousand inclinations, as with
cords, is the most tractable instrument that is, and if once rationally
excited, easy to be moved to the object that is to be conceived;
for here the beginnings of the passions and appetites spread to the
understanding mind, and that being once agitated, they are drawn back
again, and so stretch and raise the whole man. Hence you may guess how
great is the force of a conception when it hath entered the mind; for
the bones that are insensible, the nerves, the flesh that is full of
humors, and the heavy mass composed of all these, lying quiet and at
rest, as soon as the soul gives the impulse and raiseth an appetite
to move towards any object, are all roused and invigorated, and every
member seems a wing to carry it forward to action. Nor is it impossible
or even very difficult to conceive the manner of this motion and
stirring, by which the soul having conceived any thing draweth after
her, by means of appetites, the whole mass of the body. But inasmuch
as language, apprehended without any sensible voice, easily excites;
so, in my opinion, the understanding of a superior nature and a more
divine soul may excite an inferior soul, touching it from without,
like as one speech may touch and rouse another, and as light causes
its own reflection. We, it is true, as it were groping in the dark,
find out one another’s conceptions by the voice; but the conceptions
of the Daemons carry a light with them, and shine to those that are
able to perceive them, so that there is no need of words such as men
use as signs to one another, seeing thereby only the images of the
conceptions, and being unable to see the conceptions themselves unless
they enjoy a peculiar and (as I said before) a divine light. This
may be illustrated from the nature and effect of voice; for the air
being formed into articulate sounds, and made all voice, transmits the
conception of the soul to the hearer; so that it is no wonder if the
air, that is very apt to take impressions, being fashioned according
to the object conceived by a more excellent nature, signifies that
conception to some divine and extraordinary men. For as a stroke upon a
brazen shield, when the noise ariseth out of a hollow, is heard only by
those who are in a convenient position, and is not perceived by others;
so the speeches of the Daemon, though indifferently applied to all, yet
sound only to those who are of a quiet temper and sedate mind, and such
as we call holy and divine men. Most believe that Daemons communicate
some illuminations to men asleep, but think it strange and incredible
that they should communicate the like to them whilst they are awake
and have their senses and reason vigorous; as wise a fancy as it is to
imagine that a musician can use his harp when the strings are slack,
but cannot play when they are screwed up and in tune. For they do not
consider that the effect is hindered by the unquietness and incapacity
of their own minds; from which inconveniences our friend Socrates was
free, as the oracle assured his father whilst he was a boy. For that
commanded him to let young Socrates do what he would, not to force or
draw him from his inclinations, but let the boy’s humor have its free
course; to beg Jupiter’s and the Muses’ blessing upon him, and take no
farther care, intimating that he had a good guide to direct him, that
was better than ten thousand tutors and instructors.

21. This, Phidolaus, was my notion of Socrates’s Daemon, whilst he
lived and since his death; and I look upon all they mention about
omens, sneezings, or the like, to be dreams and fooleries. But what
I heard Timarchus discourse upon the same subject, lest some should
think I delight in fables, perhaps it is best to conceal. By no means,
cried Theocritus, let’s have it; for though they do not perfectly agree
with it, yet I know many fables that border upon truth; but pray first
tell us who this Timarchus was, for I never was acquainted with the
man. Very likely, Theocritus, said Simmias; for he died when he was
very young, and desired Socrates to bury him by Lampocles, the son of
Socrates, who was his dear friend, of the same age, and died not many
days before him. He being eager to know (for he was a fine youth, and
a beginner in philosophy) what Socrates’s Daemon was, acquainting none
but Cebes and me with his design, went down into Trophonius’s cave, and
performed all the ceremonies that were requisite to gain an oracle.
There he stayed two nights and one day, so that his friends despaired
of his return and lamented him as lost; but the next morning he came
out with a very cheerful countenance, and having adored the God, and
freed himself from the thronging inquisitive crowd, he told us many
wonderful things that he had seen and heard; for this was his relation.

22. As soon as he entered, a thick darkness surrounded him; then, after
he had prayed, he lay a long while upon the ground, but was not certain
whether awake or in a dream, only he imagined that a smart stroke fell
upon his head, and that through the parted sutures of his skull his
soul fled out; which being now loose, and mixed with a purer and more
lightsome air, was very jocund and well pleased; it seemed to begin to
breathe, as if till then it had been almost choked, and grew bigger
than before, like a sail swollen by the wind; then he heard a small
noise whirling round his head, very sweet and ravishing, and looking up
he saw no earth, but certain islands shining with a gentle fire, which
interchanged colors according to the different variation of the light,
innumerable and very large, unequal, but all round. These whirling, it
is likely, agitated the ether, and made that sound; for the ravishing
softness of it was very agreeable to their even motions. Between these
islands there was a large sea or lake which shone very gloriously,
being adorned with a gay variety of colors mixed with blue; some few of
the islands swam in this sea, and were carried to the other side of the
current; others, and those the most, were carried up and down, tossed,
whirled, and almost overwhelmed.

The sea in some places seemed very deep, especially toward the south,
in other parts very shallow; it ebbed and flowed, but the tides
were neither high nor strong; in some parts its color was pure and
sea-green, in others it looked muddy and as troubled as a pool. The
current brings those islands that were carried over to the other side
back again; but not to the same point, so that their motions are not
exactly circular, but winding. About the middle of these islands,
the ambient sea seemed to bend into a hollow, a little less, as it
appeared to him, than eight parts of the whole. Into this sea were two
entrances, by which it received two opposite fiery rivers, running in
with so strong a current, that it spread a fiery white over a great
part of the blue sea. This sight pleased him very much; but when he
looked downward, there appeared a vast chasm, round, as if he had
looked into a divided sphere, very deep and frightful, full of thick
darkness, which was every now and then troubled and disturbed. Thence a
thousand howlings and bellowings of beasts, cries of children, groans
of men and women, and all sorts of terrible noises reached his ears;
but faintly, as being far off and rising through the vast hollow; and
this terrified him exceedingly.

A little while after, an invisible thing spoke thus to him: Timarchus,
what dost thou desire to understand? And he replied, Every thing; for
what is there that is not wonderful and surprising? We have little
to do with those things above, they belong to other Gods; but as for
Proserpina’s quarter, which is one of the four (as Styx divides them)
that we govern, you may visit it if you please. But what is Styx? The
way to hell, which reaches to the contrary quarter, and with its head
divides the light; for, as you see, it rises from hell below, and as it
rolls on touches also the light, and is the limit of the extremest part
of the universe. There are four divisions of all things; the first is
of life, the second of motion, the third of generation, and the fourth
of corruption. The first is coupled to the second by a unit, in the
substance invisible; the second to the third by understanding, in the
Sun; and the third to the fourth by nature, in the Moon. Over every one
of these ties a Fate, daughter of Necessity, presides; over the first,
Atropos; over the second, Clotho; and Lachesis over the third, which
is in the Moon, and about which is the whole whirl of generation. All
the other islands have Gods in them; but the Moon, belonging to earthly
Daemons, is raised but a little above Styx. Styx seizes on her once in
a hundred and seventy-seven second revolutions; and when it approaches,
the souls are startled, and cry out for fear; for hell swallows up a
great many, and the Moon receives some swimming up from below which
have run through their whole course of generation, unless they are
wicked and impure. For against such she throws flashes of lightning,
makes horrible noises, and frights them away; so that, missing their
desired happiness and bewailing their condition, they are carried down
again (as you see) to undergo another generation. But, said Timarchus,
I see nothing but stars leaping about the hollow, some carried into
it, and some darting out of it again. These, said the voice, are
Daemons; for thus it is. Every soul hath some portion of reason; a man
cannot be a man without it; but as much of each soul as is mixed with
flesh and appetite is changed, and through pain or pleasure becomes
irrational. Every soul doth not mix herself after one sort; for some
plunge themselves into the body, and so in this life their whole frame
is corrupted by appetite and passion; others are mixed as to some part,
but the purer part still remains without the body,—it is not drawn
down into it, but it swims above, and touches the extremest part of
the man’s head; it is like a cord to hold up and direct the subsiding
part of the soul, as long as it proves obedient and is not overcome by
the appetites of the flesh. That part that is plunged into the body
is called the soul, but the uncorrupted part is called the mind, and
the vulgar think it is within them, as likewise they imagine the image
reflected from a glass to be in that. But the more intelligent, who
know it to be without, call it a Daemon. Therefore those stars which
you see extinguished imagine to be souls whose whole substances are
plunged into bodies; and those that recover their light and rise from
below, that shake off the ambient mist and darkness, as if it were
clay and dirt, to be such as retire from their bodies after death;
and those that are carried up on high are the Daemons of wise men and
philosophers. But pray pry narrowly, and endeavor to discover the tie
by which every one is united to a soul. Upon this, Timarchus looked as
steadfastly as he could, and saw some of the stars very much agitated,
and some less, as the corks upon a net; and some whirled round like
a spindle, having a very irregular and uneven motion, and not being
able to run in a straight line. And thus the voice said: Those that
have a straight and regular motion belong to souls which are very
manageable, by reason of their genteel breeding and philosophical
education, and which upon earth do not plunge themselves into the foul
clay and become irrational. But those that move irregularly, sometimes
upwards, sometimes downwards, as striving to break loose from a vexing
chain, are yoked to and strive with very untractable conditions, which
ignorance and want of learning make headstrong and ungovernable.
Sometimes they get the better of the passions, and draw them to the
right side; sometimes they are drawn away by them, and sink into sin
and folly, and then again endeavor to get out. For the tie, as it were
a bridle on the irrational part of the soul, when it is pulled back,
draws in repentance for past sins, and shame for loose and unlawful
pleasures, which is a pain and stroke inflicted on the soul by a
governing and prevailing power; till by this means it becomes gentle
and manageable, and like a tamed beast, without blows or torment, it
understands the minutest direction of the Daemon. Such indeed are but
very slowly and very hardly brought to a right temper; but of that
sort which from the very beginning are governable and obedient to the
direction of the Daemon, are those prophetic souls, those intimates of
the Gods. Such was the soul of Hermodorus the Clazomenian, of which it
is reported that for several nights and days it would leave his body,
travel over many countries, and return after it had viewed things and
discoursed with persons at a great distance; till at last, by the
treachery of his wife, his body was delivered to his enemies, and they
burnt the house while the inhabitant was abroad. It is certain, this
is a mere fable. The soul never went out of the body, but it loosened
the tie that held the Daemon, and permitted it to wander; so that
this, seeing and hearing the various external occurrences, brought
in the news to it; yet those that burnt his body are even till this
time severely tormented in the deepest pit of hell. But this, youth,
you shall more clearly perceive three months hence; now depart. The
voice continuing no longer, Timarchus (as he said) turned about to
discover who it was that spoke; but a violent pain, as if his skull
had been pressed together, seized his head, so that he lost all sense
and understanding; but in a little while recovering, he found himself
in the entrance of the cave, where he at first lay down.

23. This was Timarchus’s story; and when at Athens, in the third month
after he had heard the voice, he died. We, amazed at the event, told
Socrates the whole tale. Socrates was angry with us for not discovering
it whilst Timarchus was alive; for he would very gladly have had a more
full discovery from his own mouth. I have done, Theocritus, with the
story and discourse; but pray, shall we not entreat the stranger to
discuss this point? For it is a very proper subject for excellent and
divine men. What then, said Theanor, shall we not have the opinion of
Epaminondas, who is of the same school, and as well learned as myself
in these matters? But my father with a smile said: Sir, that is his
humor; he loves to be silent, he is very cautious how he proposeth any
thing, but will hear eternally, and is never weary of an instructive
story; so that Spintharus the Tarentine, who lived with him a long
time, would often say that he never met a man that knew more, or spake
less. Therefore, pray sir, let us have your thoughts.

24. Then, said Theanor, in my opinion, that story of Timarchus
should be accounted sacred and inviolable, and consecrated to God;
and I wonder that any one should disbelieve his report, as Simmias
has related it. Swans, horses, dogs, and dragons we sometimes call
sacred; and yet we cannot believe that men are sacred and favorites
of Heaven, though we confess the love of man and not the love of
birds to be an attribute of the Deity. Now as one that loves horses
doth not take an equal care of the whole kind, but always choosing
out some one excellent, rides, trains, feeds, and loves him above the
rest; so amongst men, the superior powers, choosing, as it were, the
best out of the whole herd, breed them more carefully and nicely;
not directing them, it is true, by reins and bridles, but by reason
imparted by certain notices and signs, which the vulgar and common
sort do not understand. For neither do all dogs know the huntsman’s,
nor all horses the jockey’s signs; but those that are bred to it are
easily directed by a whistle or a hollow, and very readily obey. And
Homer seems to have understood the difference I mention; for some of
the prophets he calls augurs, some priests, some such as understood
the voice of the very Gods, were of the same mind with them, and could
foretell things; thus,

Helenus Priam’s son the same decreed,
On which consulting Gods before agreed.

And in another place,

As I heard lately from th’ immortal Gods.[208]

For as those that are not near the persons of kings or commanders
understand their minds by fire-signals, proclamation, sound of trumpet,
or the like, but their favorites receive it from their own mouth; so
the Deity converses immediately but with very few, and very seldom; but
to most he gives signs, from which the art of divination is gathered.
So that the Gods direct the lives of very few, and of such only whom
they intend to raise to the highest degree of perfection and happiness.
Those souls (as Hesiod sings) that are not to be put into another body,
but are freed from all union with flesh, turn guardian Daemons and
preside over others. For as wrestlers, when old age makes them unfit
for exercise, have some love for it still left, delight to see others
wrestle, and encourage them; so souls that have passed all the stages
of life, and by their virtue are exalted into Daemons, do not slight
the endeavors of man, but being kind to those that strive for the same
attainments, and in some sort banding and siding with them, encourage
and help them on, when they see them near their hope and ready to
catch the desired prize. For the Daemon doth not go along with every
one; but as in a shipwreck, those that are far from land their friends
standing on the shore only look upon and pity, but those that are near
they encourage and wade in to save; so the Daemon deals with mankind.
Whilst we are immersed in worldly affairs, and are changing bodies, as
fit vehicles for our conveyance, he lets us alone to try our strength,
patiently to stem the tide and get into the haven by ourselves; but
if a soul hath gone through the trials of a thousand generations, and
now, when her course is almost finished, strives bravely, and with a
great deal of labor endeavors to ascend, the Deity permits her proper
Genius to aid her, and even gives leave to any other that is willing to
assist. The Daemon, thus permitted, presently sets about the work; and
upon his approach, if the soul obeys and hearkens to his directions,
she is saved; if not, the Daemon leaves her, and she lies in a
miserable condition.

25. This discourse was just ended, when Epaminondas looking upon me,
said: Caphisias, it is time for you to be at the ring, your usual
company will expect you; we, as soon as we break company, will take
care of Theanor. And I replied: Sir, I’ll go presently, but I think
Theocritus here hath something to say to you and me and Galaxidorus.
Let’s hear it in God’s name, said he; and rising up, he led us into a
corner of the porch. When we had him in the midst of us, we all began
to desire him to make one in the conspiracy. He replied that he knew
the day appointed for the exiles’ return, and that he and Gorgidas had
their friends ready upon occasion; but that he was not for killing any
of the citizens without due process of law, unless some grave necessity
seemed to warrant the execution. Besides, it was requisite that there
should be some unconcerned in the design; for such the multitude would
not be jealous of, but would think what they advised was for the good
of the commonwealth, that their counsels proceeded from the love they
had for their country, and not from any design of procuring their own
safety. This motion we liked; he returned to Simmias and his company,
and we went to the ring, where we met our friends, and as we wrestled
together, communicated our thoughts to one another, and put things in
order for action. There we saw Philip and Archias very spruce, anointed
and perfumed, going away to the prepared feast; for Phyllidas, fearing
they would execute Amphitheus before supper, as soon as he had brought
Lysanoridas going, went to Archias, and putting him in hopes of the
woman’s company he desired, and assuring him she would be at the place
appointed, soon trepanned him into stupid carelessness and sensuality
with his fellow-wantons.

26. About the night, the wind rising, the sharpness of the weather
increased, and that forced most to keep within doors; we meeting with
Damoclides, Pelopidas, and Theopompus received them, and others met
other of the exiles; for as soon as they were come over Cithaeron,
they separated, and the stormy weather obliged them to walk with their
faces covered, so that without any fear or danger they passed through
the city. Some as they entered had a flash of lightning on their
right-hand, without a clap of thunder, and that portended safety and
glory; intimating that their actions should be splendid and without
danger.

27. When we were all together in the house (eight and forty in number),
and Theocritus in a little room by himself offering sacrifice, there
was heard on a sudden a loud knocking at the gate; and presently one
came and told us that two of Archias’s guard, who had some earnest
business with Charon, knocked at the gate, demanding entrance, and
were very angry that they were not admitted sooner. Charon surprised
commanded the doors to be opened presently, and going to meet them
with a garland on his head, as if he had been sacrificing or making
merry, asked their business. One of them replied, Philip and Archias
sent us to tell you that you must come before them presently. And
Charon demanding why they sent for him in such haste, and if all was
well; We know nothing more, the messenger returned, but what answer
shall we carry back? That, replied Charon, putting off his garland and
putting on his cloak, I follow you; for should I go along with you, my
friends would be concerned, imagining that I am taken into custody. Do
so, said they, for we must go and carry the governor’s orders to the
city guard. With this they departed, but Charon coming in and telling
us the story, we were all very much surprised, imagining the design
had been discovered; and most suspected Hipposthenides, and thought
that he, having endeavored to hinder their coming through Chido and
failed, now the time for the dangerous attempt unavoidably approached,
grew faint-hearted and made a discovery of the plot. And this seemed
probable, for he did not appear at Charon’s house with the rest,
and so was looked upon by every one to be a rascal and a turncoat;
yet we all were of opinion that Charon ought to obey the governor’s
orders and go to them. Then he, commanding his son to be brought to
him,—the prettiest youth, Archidamus, in all Thebes, skilled in most
exercises, scarce fifteen years old, but very strong and lusty for his
age,—thus said: Friends, this is my only and my beloved son, and him I
put into your hands, conjuring you by all that’s good, if you find me
treacherous, to kill him and have no mercy upon him for my sake; but
as for your parts, sirs, be provided against the worst that can come;
do not yield your bodies tamely to be butchered by base fellows, but
behave yourselves bravely, and preserve your souls invincible for the
good and glory of your country. When Charon had ended, we admired the
honesty and bravery of the man, but were angry at his suspicion, and
bade him take away his son. Charon, said Pelopidas, we should have
taken it more kindly, if you had removed your son into another house,
for why should he suffer for being in our company? Nay, let us send him
away now, that, if we fall, he may live, and grow up to punish the
tyrants and be a brave revenger of our deaths. By no means, replied
Charon, he shall stay here, and run the same danger with you all, for
it is not best that he should fall into the power of his enemies; and
you, my boy, be daring above thy age, and with these brave citizens
venture upon necessary dangers for the defence of liberty and virtue;
for we have good hopes still left, and perhaps some God will protect us
in this just and generous undertaking.

28. These words of his, Archidamus, drew tears from many; but he not
shedding so much as one, and delivering his son to Pelopidas, went
out of the door, saluting and encouraging every one as he went. But
you would have been exceedingly surprised at the serene and fearless
temper of the boy, with a soul as great as that of Achilles’s son;
for he did not change color or seem concerned, but drew out and tried
the goodness of Pelopidas’s sword. In the mean time Diotonus, one of
Cephisodorus’s friends, came to us with his sword girt and breastplate
on; and understanding that Archias had sent for Charon, he chid our
delay, and urged us to go and set upon the house presently; for so we
should be too quick for them, and take them unprovided. Or, if we did
not like that proposal, he said, it was better to go out and fall upon
them while they were scattered and in confusion, than to coop ourselves
up altogether in one room, and like a hive of bees be taken off by our
enemies. Theocritus likewise pressed us to go on, affirming that the
sacrifices were lucky, and promised safety and success.

29. Upon this, whilst we were arming and setting ourselves in order,
Charon came in, looking very merrily and jocund, and with a smile
said: Courage, sirs, there is no danger, but the design goes on very
well; for Archias and Philip, as soon as they heard that according to
their order I was come, being very drunk and weakened in body and
understanding, with much ado came out to me; and Archias said, I hear
that the exiles are returned, and lurk privately in town. At this I
was very much surprised, but recovering myself asked, Who are they,
sir, and where? We don’t know, said Archias, and therefore sent for
you, to enquire whether you had heard any clear discovery; and I, as it
were surprised, considering a little with myself, imagined that what
they heard was only uncertain report, and that none of the associates
had made this discovery (for then they would have known the house),
but that it was a groundless suspicion and rumor about town that came
to their ears, and therefore said: I remember, whilst Androclidas was
alive, that a great many idle lying stories were spread abroad, to
trouble and amuse us; but, sir, I have not heard one word of this, yet
if you please, I will enquire what ground there is for it, and if I
find any thing considerable, I shall give you notice. Yes, pray, said
Phyllidas, examine this matter very narrowly; slight no particular,
be very diligent and careful, foresight is very commendable and safe.
When he had said this, he led back Archias into the room, where they
are now drinking. But, sirs, let us not delay, but begging the God’s
assistance, put ourselves presently upon action. Upon this, we went to
prayers, and encouraged one another.

30. It was now full supper-time, the wind was high, and snow and
small rain fell, so that the streets and narrow lanes we passed
were all empty. They that were to assault Leontidas and Hypates,
whose houses joined, went out in their usual clothes, having no arms
besides their swords; amongst those were Pelopidas, Democlides, and
Cephisodorus. Charon, Melon, and the rest that were to set upon
Archias, put on breastplates, and shady fir or pine garlands upon
their heads; some dressed themselves in women’s clothes, so that they
looked like a drunken company of mummers. But our enemies’ unlucky
Fortune, Archidamus, resolving to make their folly and carelessness as
conspicuous as our eagerness and courage, and having, as in a play,
intermixed a great many dangerous underplots into our plan, now, at
the very point of its execution, presented to us a most unexpected
and hazardous adventure. For whilst Charon, as soon as ever he parted
from Archias and Philip, was come back and was setting us forward to
execute the design, a letter from Archias, the chief-priest of Athens,
was sent to Archias our governor, which contained a full discovery of
the plot, in what house the exiles met, and who were the associates.
Archias being now dead drunk, and quite beside himself with expectation
of the desired women, took the letter; and the bearer saying, “Sir,
it contains matter of concern,” “Matters of concern to-morrow,” he
replied, and clapped it under his cushion; and calling for the glass,
he bade the servant fill a brimmer, and sent Phyllidas often to the
door to see if the women were coming.

31. The hopes of this company made them sit long; and we coming
opportunely quickly forced our way through the servants to the hall,
and stood a little at the door, to take notice of every one at table;
our shady garlands and apparel disguising our intentions, all sat
silent, in expectation of what would follow. But as soon as Melon,
laying his hand upon his sword, was making through the midst of them,
Cabirichus (who was the archon chosen by lot) catching him by the
arm cried out to Phyllidas, Is not this Melon? Melon loosed his hold
presently, and drawing out his sword, made at staggering Archias,
and laid him dead on the floor; Charon wounded Philip in the neck,
and whilst he endeavored to defend himself with the cups that were
about him, Lysitheus threw him off his seat, and ran him through. We
persuaded Cabirichus to be quiet, not to assist the tyrants, but to
join with us to free his country, for whose good he was consecrated
governor and devoted to the Gods. But when being drunk he would not
harken to reason, but grew high, began to bustle, and turned the
point of his spear upon us (for our governors always carry a spear
with them), I catching it in the midst, and raising it higher than my
head, desired him to let it go and consult his own safety, for else
he would be killed. But Theopompus, standing on his right side and
smiting him with his sword, said: Lie there, with those whose interest
you espoused; thou shalt not wear the garland in freed Thebes, nor
sacrifice to the Gods any more, by whom thou hast so often curst thy
country, by making prayers so many times for the prosperity of her
enemies. Cabirichus falling, Theocritus standing by snatched up the
sacred spear, and kept it from being stained; and some few of the
servants that dared to resist we presently despatched; the others that
were quiet we shut up in the hall, being very unwilling that they
should get abroad and make any discovery, till we knew whether the
other company had succeeded in their attempt.

32. They managed their business thus: Pelopidas and those with him went
softly and knocked at Leontidas’s gate; and a servant coming to demand
their business, they said, they came from Athens, and brought a letter
from Callistratus to Leontidas. The servant went and acquainted his
master, and was ordered to open the door; as soon as it was unbarred,
they all violently rushed in, and overturning the servant ran through
the hall directly to Leontidas’s chamber. He, presently suspecting what
was the matter, drew his dagger and stood upon his guard; an unjust
man, it is true, and a tyrant, but courageous and strong of his hands;
but he forgot to put out the candle and get amongst the invaders in the
dark, and so appearing in the light, as soon as they opened the door,
he ran Cephisodorus through the belly. Next he engaged Pelopidas,
and cried out to the servants to come and help; but those Samidas and
his men secured, nor did they dare to come to handy blows with the
strongest and most valiant of the citizens. There was a smart encounter
between Pelopidas and Leontidas, for the passage was very narrow, and
Cephisodorus falling and dying in the midst, nobody else could come to
strike one blow. At last Pelopidas, receiving a slight wound in the
head, with repeated thrusts overthrew Leontidas, and killed him upon
Cephisodorus, who was yet breathing; for he saw his enemy fall, and
shaking Pelopidas by the hand, and saluting all the rest, he died with
a smile upon his face. This done, they went to the house of Hypates,
and entering after the same manner, they pursued Hypates, flying over
the roof into a neighbor’s house, and caught and killed him.

33. From thence they marched directly to us, and we met in the piazza;
and having saluted and told one another our success, we went all to
the prison. And Phyllidas, calling out the keeper, said: Philip and
Archias command you to bring Amphitheus presently before them. But
he, considering the unseasonableness of the time, and that Phyllidas,
as being yet hot and out of breath, spoke with more than ordinary
concern, suspected the cheat, and replied to Phyllidas: Pray, sir, did
ever the governors send for a prisoner at such a time before? Or ever
by you? What warrant do you bring? As he was prating thus, Phyllidas
ran him through,—a base fellow, upon whose carcass the next day many
women spat and trampled. We, breaking open the prison door, first
called out Amphitheus by name, and then others, as every one had a
mind; they, knowing our voice, jocundly leaped out of their straw in
which they lay, with their chains upon their legs. The others that
were in the stocks held out their hands, and begged us not to leave
them behind. These being set free, many of the neighbors came in to
us, understanding and rejoicing for what was done. The women too, as
soon as they were acquainted with the flying report, unmindful of the
Boeotian strictness, ran out to one another, and enquired of every
one they met how things went. Those that found their fathers or their
husbands followed them; for the tears and prayers of the modest women
were a very great incitement to all they met.

34. Our affairs being in this condition, understanding that
Epaminondas, Gorgidas, and their friends were drawing into a body about
Minerva’s temple, I went to them. Many honest worthy citizens at first
joined, and their number continually increased. When I had informed
them in the particulars of what was done, and desired them to march
into the market-place to assist their friends, they proclaimed liberty;
and the multitude were furnished with, arms out of the piazzas, that
were stuffed with spoil, and the neighboring armorers’ shops. Then
Hipposthenides with his friends and servants appeared, having by chance
joined the trumpeters that were coming to Thebes, against the feast of
Hercules. Straight some gave the alarm in the market-place, others in
other parts of the city, distracting their enemies on all sides, as
if the whole city was in arms. Some, lighting smoky fire, concealed
themselves in the cloud and fled to the castle, drawing to them the
select band which used to keep guard about the castle all night. The
garrison of the castle, when these poured in among them scattered and
in disorder, though they saw us all in confusion, and knew we had
no standing compact body, yet would not venture to make a descent,
though they were above five thousand strong. They were really afraid,
but pretended they dared not move without Lysanoridas’s orders, who,
contrary to his usual custom, was absent from the castle that day. For
which neglect, the Spartans (as I was told), having got Lysanoridas
into their hands, fined him heavily; and having taken Hermippidas and
Arcesus at Corinth, they put them both to death without delay. And
surrendering the castle to us upon articles, they marched out with
their garrison.

OF CURIOSITY, OR AN OVER-BUSY INQUISITIVENESS INTO THINGS IMPERTINENT.

1. If a dwelling-house, by reason of its ill situation or contrivance,
be not commodiously light and airy, or too much exposed to ill weather
and unhealthy, it is most advisable entirely to quit such a habitation,
unless perhaps, through continuance of time, neighborhood of friends,
or any other endearing circumstance, a man should become much wedded
to the place; in which case it may be possible, by the alteration of
windows and new placing of doors and staircases, either to remove or to
lessen these inconveniences. By such like remedies, even whole cities
have been much amended and improved both as to health and pleasantness;
and it is said of the place of my nativity particularly, that, while it
once lay open to the western winds, and to the beams of the declining
sun streaming over the top of Parnassus, it was by Chaeron turned
toward the east; but it is thought that Empedocles the naturalist
secured that whole region round about from the pestilence, by closing
up the rift of a certain mountain, from whence a contagious southerly
damp breathed forth upon the flat of that country. And now, since there
are several noxious qualities and distempered passions that lurk within
the body too, which is the more immediate habitation of the soul,—and
which, like the dark and tempestuous weather that is without, do cloud
and disturb it,—therefore the like method which has been observed in
curing the defects and annoyances of an ill-contrived and unhealthy
dwelling may be followed here, in rendering the body a more commodious,
serviceable, and delightful mansion for the soul. Wherein that it
may enjoy its desired calmness and serenity, it will conduce beyond
all other expedients whatsoever, that those blind, tumultuous, and
extravagant passions should be expelled or extinguished utterly; or, if
that cannot be, yet that they be so far reduced and moderated, and so
prudently applied and accommodated to their proper objects, that the
mischief and disorder of them (at least) may be removed.

Among these may deservedly be accounted that sort of curiosity, which,
by its studious prying into the evils of mankind, seems to be a
distemper of envy and ill-nature.

Why envious wretch, with such a piercing ray,
Blind to thine own, dost others’ faults survey?

If the knowledge of ill can reward the industrious search with so much
delight and pleasure, turn the point of thy curiosity upon thyself and
thine own affairs, and thou shalt within doors find matter enough for
the most laborious enquiries, plentiful as

Water in Aliso’s stream, or leaves about the oak.

So vast a heap of offences shalt thou find in thy own conversation,
such variety of perturbations in thy soul, and manifold failures in
thy duty. To take a distinct and orderly survey of all which, that of
Xenophon will be good direction, who said, that it was the manner of
discreet housekeepers to place their weapons of war, utensils for the
kitchen, instruments of husbandry, and furniture for religious and
sacred services, each in several and proper repositories. So every
man that would make an exact enquiry into and take a just account
of himself, should first make a particular search into the several
mischiefs that proceed from each passion within him, whether it be
envy or jealousy, covetousness or cowardice, or any other vicious
inclination; and then distribute and range them all (as it were) into
distinct apartments.

This done, make thy reviews upon them with the most accurate
inspection, so that nothing may divert thee from the severest scrutiny;
obstruct every prospect that looks towards thy neighbors’ quarters,
and close up all those avenues which may lead thee to any foreign
curiosity; become an eavesdropper to thine own house, listen to the
whispers of thine own walls, and observe those secret arts of the
female closet, the close intrigues of the parlor, and the treacherous
practices of thy servants, which thy own windows will discover to thee.
Here this inquisitive and busy disposition may find an employment
that will be of use and advantage, and is neither ill-natured nor
impertinent; while every man shall call himself to this strict
examination.

Where have I err’d? What have I said, or done?
What duty, when, and how have I foregone?

2. But now, as the poets feign concerning Lamia, that upon her going to
bed she lays aside her eyes among the attirements of her dressing-box,
and is at home for the most part blind and drowsy too, and puts on
her eyes only when she goes abroad a gadding; so it is with most
men, who, through a kind of an affected ignorance and artificial
blindness, commonly blunder and stumble at their own threshold, are the
greatest strangers to their own personal defects, and of all others
least familiarly acquainted with their own domestic ills and follies.
But when they look abroad, their sight is sharpened with all the
watchful and laborious curiosity imaginable, which serves as deforming
spectacles to an evil eye, that is already envenomed by the malignity
of a worse nature.

And hence it is, that a person of this busy meddlesome disposition is
a greater friend to them he hates than to himself; for overlooking
his own concerns, through his being so heedfully intent on those of
other men, he reproves and exposes their miscarriages, admonishes them
of the errors and follies they ought to correct, and affrights them
into greater caution for the future; so that not only the careless and
unwary, but even the more sober and prudent persons, may gain no small
advantage from the impertinence and ill-nature of inquisitive people.

It was a remarkable instance of the prudence of Ulysses, that, going
into the regions of departed souls, he would not exchange so much as
one word with his mother there till he had first obtained an answer
from the oracle and despatched the business he came about; and then,
turning to her, he afforded some small time for a few impertinent
questions about the other women upon the place, asking which was Tyro,
and which the fair Chloris, and concerning the unfortunate Epicasta,
why,

Noosed to a lofty beam, she would suspended die.[209]

But we through extreme sloth and ignorance, being stupidly careless of
our own affairs, must be idly spending our time and talk either about
our neighbor’s pedigree, how that such a one had a tapster for his
grandfather, and that his grandmother was a laundress; or that another
owes three or four talents, and is not able to pay the interest. Nay,
and such trivial stuff as this we busy ourselves about,—where such a
man’s wife has been all this while; and what it was, that this and the
other fellow have been talking of in a corner. But the wise Socrates
employed his curiosity to better purpose, when he went about enquiring
by what excellent precepts Pythagoras obtained so great authority among
his followers; and Aristippus, meeting Ischomachus at the Olympic
games, asked him what those notions were with which Socrates had so
powerfully charmed the minds of his young scholars; upon the slight
information whereof, he was so passionately inflamed with a desire of
going to Athens, that he grew pale and lean, and almost languished till
he came to drink of the fountain itself, and had been acquainted with
the person of Socrates, and more fully learned that philosophy of his,
the design of which was to teach men how to discover their own ills and
apply proper remedies to them.

3. But to some sort of men their own life and actions would appear
the most unpleasant spectacle in the world, and therefore they fly
from the light of their conscience, and cannot bear the torture of
one reflecting thought upon themselves; for when the soul, being once
defiled with all manner of wickedness, is scared at its own hideous
deformity, it endeavors to run from itself, and ranging here and there,
it pampers its own malignity with malicious speculations on the ills of
others.

It is observed of the hen that, loathing the plenty of meat that is
cast before her on a clean floor, she will be scratching in a hole or
spurning the dunghill, in search of one single musty grain. So these
over-busy people, neglecting such obvious and common things into which
any man may enquire and talk of without offence, cannot be satisfied
unless they rake into the private and concealed evils of every family
in the neighborhood. It was smartly said by the Egyptian, who, being
asked what it was he carried so closely, replied, it was therefore
covered that it might be secret. Which answer will serve to check
the curiosity of those impertinent men who will be always peeping
into the privacies of others; for assuredly there is nothing usually
more concealed than what is too foul to be seen; nor would it be kept
so close, were it either fit or safe it should be known. Without
knocking at the door, it is great rudeness to enter another’s house,
and therefore in former times were rappers fitted to the gates, that
by the noise thereof notice might be given to the family; for the
same purpose are porters appointed now, lest, a stranger coming in
unawares, the mistress or daughter of the family might be surprised
busy or undressed, or a servant be seen under correction, or the maids
be overheard in the heat of their scolding. But a person of this
prying busy temper, who would disdain the being invited to a sober
and well-governed house, will yet even forcibly intrude himself as a
spy into the indecencies of private families; and he pries into those
very things which locks, bolts, and doors were intended to secure from
common view, for no other end but to discover them to all the world.
Aristo said that those winds were the most troublesome which blew up
one’s garments and exposed one’s nakedness; but these inquisitive
people deprive us of all the shelter or security of walls and doors,
and like the wanton air, which pervades the veil and steals through
the closest guards of virgin modesty, they insinuate into those
divertisements which are hidden in the retirements of the night, and
strip men even to their very skin.

4. So that—as it is merrily said by the comedian concerning Cleon,
that “his hands were in Aetolia, and his soul in Thieftown”[210]—the
hands and feet, eyes and thoughts of inquisitive persons are straggling
about in many places at once. Neither the mansions of the great, nor
the cottages of the poor, nor the privy chambers of princes, nor
the recesses of the nuptial alcove, can escape the search of their
curiosity; they are familiar to the affairs of strangers, and will
be prying into the darkest mysteries of state, although it be to the
manifest peril of their being ruined by it. For as to him that will be
curiously examining the virtues of medicinal herbs, the unwary taste
of a venomous plant conveys a deleterious impression upon the brain,
before its noxious quality can be discerned by the palate; so they
that boldly pry into the ills of great persons usually meet with their
own destruction, sooner than they can discover the dangerous secret
they enquire after. And so it happens that, when the rashly curious
eye, not contented to expatiate in the free and boundless region of
reflected light, will be gazing at the imperial seat of brightness, it
becomes a sacrifice to the burning rays, and straight sinks down in
penal darkness.

It was therefore well said by Philippides the comedian, who, being
asked by King Lysimachus what he desired might be imparted to him,
replied, Any thing but a secret. And indeed, those things in the courts
of princes that are most pleasant in themselves and most delightful to
be known,—such as balls, magnificent entertainments, and all the shows
of pomp and greatness,—are exposed to common view, nor do they ever
hide those divertisements and enjoyments which are the attendants of
a prosperous estate; but in what cases soever they seem reserved,—as
when they are conceiving some high displeasure, or contriving the
methods of a revenge, or raging under a fit of jealousy, or suspicious
of the disloyal practices of their children, or dubious concerning
the treachery of a favorite,—come not near nor intermeddle, for every
thing is of a dreadful aspect and of very dangerous access that is thus
concealed. Fly from so black a cloud, whose darkness condenses into a
tempest; and it will be time enough, when its fury breaks forth with
flash and thunder, for thee to observe upon whose head the mischief
falls.

5. But to avoid the danger of this curiosity, divert thy thoughts to
more safe and delightful enquiries; survey the wonders of nature in
the heavens, earth, the sea, and air; in which thou hast a copious
choice of materials for the more sublime, as well as the more easy and
obvious contemplations. If thy more piercing wit aspires to the noblest
enquiries, consider the greater luminary in its diurnal motion, in
what part of heaven its morning beams are kindled, and where those
chambers of the night are placed which entertain its declining lustre.
View the moon in all her changes, the just representation of human
vicissitudes, and learn the causes that destroy and then restore her
brightness:—

How from an infant-spark sprung out of night,
She swells into a perfect globe of light;
And soon her beauties thus repaired die,
Wasting into their first obscurity.[211]

These are indeed the great secrets of Nature, whose depth may perhaps
amaze and discourage thy enquiries. Search therefore into things
more obvious,—why the fruits of plants are shaped into such variety
of figures; why some are clothed with the verdure of a perennial
spring, and others, which sometime were no less fresh and fair, like
hasty spendthrifts, lavish away the bounty of Heaven in one summer’s
gayety, and stand naked to the succeeding frosts. But such harmless
speculations will perchance affect thee little, and it may be thou
hast that malignity in thy temper which, like venomous beasts that
cannot live out of stink and putrefaction, must be ever preying upon
the follies and miseries of mankind. Peruse therefore the histories
of the world, wherein thou shalt find such vast heaps of wickedness
and mischiefs, made up of the downfalls and sudden deaths of great
men,[212] the rapes and defilements of women, the treacheries of
servants, the falseness of friends, the arts of poisoning, the fatal
effects of envy and jealousy, the ruin of families, dethroning of
princes, with many other such direful occurrences as may not only
delight and satisfy, but even cloy and nauseate thy ill-natured
curiosity.

6. But neither (as it appears) are such antiquated evils any agreeable
entertainment to people of this perverse disposition; they hearken
most to modern tragedies, and such doleful accidents as may be grateful
as well for the novelty as the horror of the relation. All pleasant
and cheerful converse is irksome to them; so that if they happen into
a company that are talking of weddings, the solemnities of sacred
rites, or pompous processions, they make as though they heard not, or,
to divert and shorten the discourse, will pretend they knew as much
before. Yet, if any one should relate how such a wench had a child
before the time, or that a fellow was caught with another man’s wife,
or that certain people were at law with each other, or that there
was an unhappy difference between near relations, he no longer sits
unconcerned or minds other things, but

With ears pricked up, he listens. What, and when,
And how, he asks; pray say, let’s hear’t again!

And indeed, that proverbial saying, “Ill news goes quick and far,” was
occasioned chiefly by these busy ill-natured men, who very unwillingly
hear or talk of any thing else. For their ears, like cupping-glasses
that attract the most noxious humors in the body, are ever sucking in
the most spiteful and malicious reports; and, as in some cities there
are certain ominous gates through which nothing passes but scavenger’s
carts or the sledges of malefactors, so nothing goes in at their ears
or out of their mouths but obscene, tragical, and horrid relations.

Howling and woe, as in a jail or hell,
Always infest the places where they dwell.

This noise is to them like the Sirens’ song and the sweetest melody,
the most pleasant hearing in the world.

Now this curiosity, being an affectation of knowledge in things
concealed, must needs proceed from a great degree of spite and envy.
For men do not usually hide, but ambitiously proclaim whatever is
for their honor or interest to be known; and therefore to pry into
what is industriously covered can be for no other purpose than
that secret delight curious persons enjoy in the discovery of other
men’s ills,—which is spite,—and the relief they gather thence, to
ease themselves under their tormenting resentment at another’s
prosperity,—which is envy;—both which spring from that savage and
brutal disposition which we call ill-nature.

7. But how ungrateful it is to mankind to have their evils enquired
into appears from hence; that some have chosen rather to die than
disclose a secret disease to their physician. Suppose then that
Herophilus or Erasistratus, or Aesculapius himself when he was upon
earth, should have gone about from house to house, enquiring whether
any there had a fistula in ano or cancer in utero to be cured. Although
such a curiosity as this might in them seem much more tolerable, from
the charity of their design and the benefit intended by their art; yet
who would not rebuke the saucy officiousness of that quack who should,
unsent for, thus impudently pry into those privy distempers which the
modesty or perhaps the guilt of the patient would blush or abhor to
discover, though it were for the sake of a cure? But those that are of
this curious and busy humor cannot forbear searching into these, and
other ills too that are of a more secret nature; and—what makes the
practice the more exceedingly odious and detestable—the intent is not
to remedy, but expose them to the world. It is not ill taken, if the
searchers and officers of the customs do inspect goods openly imported,
but only when, with a design of being vexatious and troublesome, they
rip up the unsuspected packets of private passengers; and yet even this
they are by law authorized to do, and it is sometimes to their loss, if
they do not. But curious and meddlesome people will be ever enquiring
into other men’s affairs, without leave or commission, though it be to
the great neglect and damage of their own.

It is farther observable concerning this sort of men, how averse they
are to living long in the country, as being not able to endure the
quiet and calm of a retired solitude. But if by chance they take a
short ramble to their country-house, the main of their business there
is more to enquire into their neighbors’ concerns than their own; that
they may know how other men’s fruit-trees are blasted, the number of
cattle they have lost, and what a scanty harvest they are like to have,
and how well their wine keeps; with which impertinent remarks having
filled their giddy brains, the worm wags, and away they must to the
town again. Now a true bred rustic, if he by chance meet with any news
from the city, presently turns his head another way, and in his blunt
language thus reflects upon the impertinence of it:

One can’t at quiet eat, nor plough one’s lond;
Zo much us country-voke they bear in hond
With tales, which idle rascals blow about,
How kings (and well, vhat then?) vall in and out.

8. But the busy cit hates the country, as a dull unfashionable thing,
and void of mischief; and therefore keeps himself to the town, that he
may be among the crowds that throng the courts, exchange, and wharfs,
and pick up all the idle stories. Here he goes about pumping, What news
d’ye hear? Were not you upon the exchange to-day, sir? The city’s in
a very ticklish posture, what d’ye think on’t? In two or three hours’
time we may be altogether by the ears. If he’s riding post, he will
light off his horse, and even hug and kiss a fellow that has a story
to tell him; and stay never so long, till he hears it out. But if any
one upon demand shall answer, No news! he replies, as in a passion,
What, have you been neither at the exchange or market to-day? Have
you not been towards the court lately? Have you not heard any thing
from those gentlemen that newly came out of Italy? It was (methinks)
a good piece of policy among the Locrians, that if any person coming
from abroad but once asked concerning news, he was presently confined
for his curiosity; for as cooks and fishmongers wish for plenty in the
commodities they trade with, so inquisitive people that deal much in
news are ever longing for innovations, alterations, variety of action,
or any thing that is mischievous and unlucky, that they may find store
of game for their restless ill-nature to hunt and prey upon. Charondas
also did well in prohibiting comedians by law from exposing any citizen
upon the stage, unless it were for adultery or this malignant sort of
curiosity. And indeed there is a near affinity between these two vices,
for adultery is nothing else but the curiosity of discovering another
man’s secret pleasures, and the itch of knowing what is hidden; and
curiosity is (as it were) a rape and violence committed upon other
people’s privacies.

9. And now as the accumulation of notions in the head usually begets
multiplicity of words,—for which reason Pythagoras thought fit to
check the too early loquacity of his scholars, by imposing on them
five years’ silence from their first admission,—so the same curiosity
that is thus inquisitive to know is no less intemperate in talking
too, and must needs be as ill-spoken as it is ill-natured. And hence
it is that curiosity does not only become a restraint to the vices and
follies of others, but is a disappointment also to itself. For all
mankind are exceeding shy of inquisitive persons: no serious business
is consulted of where they are; and if they chance to surprise men in
the negotiation of any affair, it is presently laid aside as carefully
as the housewife locks up her fish from the cat; nor (if it be possible
to avoid it) is any thing of moment said or done in their company. But
whatever is freely permitted to any other people to see, hear, or talk
of, is kept as a great secret from persons of this busy impertinent
disposition; and there is no man but would commit his letters, papers,
and writings to the care of a servant or a stranger, rather than to an
acquaintance or relation of this busy and blabbing humor.

By the great command which Bellerophon had over his curiosity, he
resisted the solicitations of a lustful woman, and (though it were to
the hazard of his life) abstained from opening the letters wherein he
was designed to be the messenger of his own destruction. For curiosity
and adultery (as was intimated before) are both vices of incontinence;
only they are aggravated by a peculiar degree of madness and folly,
beyond what is found in most other vices of this nature. And can there
any thing be more sottish, than for a man to pass by the doors of so
many common prostitutes that are ready to seize him in the streets,
and to beleaguer the lodgings of some coy and recluse female that
is far more costly, and perhaps far less comely too, than a hackney
three-penny strumpet? But such is plainly the frensy of curious
persons, who, despising all those things that are of easy access and
unenvied enjoyment,—such as are the divertisements of the theatre, the
conversation of the ingenious, and the discourses of the learned,—must
be breaking open other men’s letters, listening at their neighbors’
doors, peeping in at their windows, or whispering with their servants;
a practice which (as it deserves) is commonly dangerous, but ever
extremely base and ignominious.

10. Now to dissuade inquisitive persons (as much as possible) from
this sneaking and most despicable humor, it would contribute much,
if they would but recollect and review all their past observations.
For as Simonides, using at certain times to open two chests he kept
by him, found that wherein he put rewards ever full, and the other
appointed for thanks always empty; so, if inquisitive people did but
now and then look into their bag of news, they would certainly be
ashamed of that vain and foolish curiosity which, with so much hazard
and trouble to themselves, had been gathering together such a confused
heap of worthless and loathsome trash. If a man, in reading over the
writings of the ancients, should rake together all the dross he could
meet with, and collect into one volume all the unfinished scraps of
verse in Homer, the incongruous expressions in the tragedians, or those
obscenities of smutty Archilochus for which he was scorned and pointed
at, would not such a filthy scavenger of books well deserve that curse
of the tragedian,

Pox on your taste! Must you, like lice and fleas,
Be always fed with scabs and nastiness?

But without this imprecation, the practice itself becomes its own
punishment, in the dishonest and unprofitable drudgery of amassing
together such a noisome heap of other men’s vices and follies; a
treasure much resembling the city Poneropolis (or _Rogue-town_),
so called by King Philip after he had peopled it with a crew of rogues
and vagabonds. For curious people do so load their dirty brains with
the ribaldry and solecisms of other men’s writings, as well as the
defects and blemishes of their lives, that there is not the least room
left in their heads for one witty, graceful, or ingenious thought.

There is a sort of people at Rome who, being unaffected with any thing
that is beautiful and pretty, either in the works of art or nature,
despise the most curious pieces in painting or sculpture, and the
fairest boys and girls that are there exposed to sale, as not worth
their money; therefore they much frequent the monster-market, looking
after people of distorted limbs and preternatural shapes, of three eyes
and pointed heads, and mongrels

Where kinds of unlike form oft blended be
Into one hideous deformity.[213]

All which are sights so loathsome, that they themselves would
abhor them were they compelled often to behold them. And if they
who curiously enquire into those vicious deformities and unlucky
accidents that may be observed in the lives of other men would only
bind themselves to a frequent recollection of what they had seen and
heard, there would be found very little delight or advantage in such
ungrateful and melancholy reflections.

11. Now since it is from the use and custom of intermeddling in the
affairs of other men that this perverse practice grows up into such a
vicious habit, therefore the best remedy thereof is, that beginning (as
it were) at a distance, and with such things as do less excite the itch
of our curiosity, we gradually bring ourselves to an utter desuetude of
enquiring into or being concerned at any of those things that do not
pertain unto us. Therefore let men first make trial of themselves in
smaller and less considerable matters. As for the purpose, why should
it be thought such a severe piece of self-denial for any man, as he
passes by, to forbear reading the inscriptions that are upon a monument
or gravestone, or the letters that are drawn on walls and sign-posts,
if it were but considered that there is nothing more, either for
delight or benefit, to be learned thereby, but that certain people
had a desire to preserve the memory of their friends and relations by
engraving their names on brass or marble, or that some impudent quack
or rooking tradesman wants money, and knows no other way to draw men to
their shop or lodgings, but by decoying billets and the invitation of
a show-board? The taking notice of which and such like things may seem
for the present harmless; yet there is really a secret mischief wrought
by it, while men, suffering their minds to rove so inconsiderately at
every thing they see, are inured to a foolish curiosity in busying
themselves about things impertinent. For as skilful huntsmen do not
permit their beagles to fling or change, but lead them forth in
couples, that their noses may be kept sharp for their proper game,

With scent most quick of nostrils after kind,
The tracks of beast so wild in chase to find;

so ought persons of an inquisitive temper to restrain the wanton
excursions of their curiosity, and confine it to observations of
prudence and sobriety. Thus the lion and eagle, which walk with their
claws sheathed to keep them always pointed for their prey, are an
example of that discretion which curious persons should imitate, by
carefully preserving those noble faculties of wit and understanding,
which were made for useful and excellent enquiries, from being dulled
and debauched with low and sottish speculations.

12. The second remedy of this curiosity is that we accustom ourselves
in passing by not to peep in at other men’s doors or windows, for in
this case the hand and eye are much alike guilty; and Xenocrates said,
“One may as well go as look into another man’s house,” because the eye
may reach what the hand cannot, and wander where the foot does not
come. And besides, it is neither genteel nor civil thus to gaze about.
A well-bred person will commonly discover very little that is either
meet or delightful to look on; but foul dishes perhaps lying about the
floor, or wenches in lazy or immodest postures, and nothing that is
decent or in good order; but as one said upon this occasion,

For ought that’s here worth seeing, friend, you may
Ev’n turn your prying look another way.

And yet laying aside this consideration of uncomely sights, this very
staring and glancing of the eyes to and fro implies such a levity
of mind and so great a defect in good manners, as must needs render
the practice in itself very clownish and contemptible. When Diogenes
observed Dioxippus, a victor in the Olympic games, twisting his neck
as he sat in his chariot, that he might take the better view of a
fair damsel that came to see the sport, Look (says he) what a worthy
gamester goes there, that even a woman can turn him which way she
lists. But these busy-brained people do so twist and turn themselves
to every frivolous show, as if they had acquired a verticity in their
heads by their custom of gazing at all things round about them. Now
(methinks) it is by no means seemly, that the sense which ought
to behave itself as a handmaid to the soul (in doing its errands
faithfully, returning speedily, and keeping at home with submissive and
reserved modesty) should be suffered, like a wanton and ungovernable
servant, to be gadding abroad from her mistress, and straying about at
her pleasure. But this happens according to that of Sophocles,

And then the Aenianian’s colts disdain
Bridle and bit, nor will abide the rein.[214]

For so the senses, not exercised and well managed, will at every turn
break loose into wild excursions, and hurry reason along with them into
the same extravagance.

It is said of Democritus, that he voluntarily put out his eyes by the
reflection of a burning-glass, that (as by the darkening of windows,
sometimes done for the same purpose) he might not by the allurements
of sense be called off from attending to his purely intellectual
contemplations. Although the story be false, yet this at least is
true, that those men who are most addicted to profound speculations
do least of all converse with impressions of sense. And therefore,
to prevent that interruption and disturbance which either noise or
impertinent visits might be to their philosophical enquiries, they
placed their studies at some distance from cities, and called the night
_Euphrone_ (from εὔφρων, of _good understanding_), thinking
that its quiet and stillness from all disturbances made it the fittest
season for meditation.

13. Farther, to forbear mixing with a crowd of fellows that are
quarrelling in the market-place, or to sit still while the mad rabble
are rioting in the streets, or at least to get out of hearing of it,
will not be very difficult to any man that considers how little there
is to be gained by intermeddling with busy and unquiet people, and how
great the certain advantage is of bridling our curiosity, and bringing
it under subjection to the commands of reason. And thus, when by this
more easy discipline a man hath acquired some power over himself,
exercises of greater difficulty are to be attempted; as, for instance,
to forbear the theatre upon the tempting fame of some new and much
applauded play; to resist the importunity of a friend that invites thee
to a ball, an entertainment at the tavern, or a concert of music; and
not to be transported if thou chance at a distance to hear the din at a
race-course, or the noise at the circus. For as Socrates advises well,
that men should abstain from tasting those meats and drinks which, by
their exquisite pleasantness, tempt the palate to exceed the sober
measures of thirst and hunger, so are all those oblectations of the ear
and eye to be avoided which are apt to entice men into impertinence or
extravagance. When Araspes had commended the fair Panthea to Cyrus, as
a beauty worth his admiration, he replied: For that very reason I will
not see her, lest, if by thy persuasion I should see her but once, she
herself might persuade me to see her often, and spend more time with
her than would be for the advantage of my own affairs. So Alexander,
upon like consideration, would not trust his eyes in the presence of
the beautiful queen of Persia, but kept himself out of the reach of
her charms, and treated only with her aged mother. But we, alas! (that
no opportunity may be lost of doing ourselves all the mischief we
can by our curiosity) cannot forbear prying into sedans and coaches,
or gazing at the windows or peeping under the balconies, where women
are; nay, we must be staring about from the house-top, to spy out all
occasions of our ruin, and are all the while so sottishly inconsiderate
as to apprehend no danger from giving such a boundless license to our
wandering eyes.

14. Now as, in point of justice and honesty, it conduces much to
prevent our defrauding and overreaching other men if we now and then
in smaller matters voluntarily abate somewhat of our strict dues, and
as it is a means to keep men chaste and continent to all other women
if they sometimes forbear the lawful enjoyment of their own wives, so
will these excesses of curiosity be cured by the same restraints, if,
instead of enquiring into what concerns other men, we can prevail with
ourselves so far as not to hear or see all that is done in our own
houses, nor to listen to every thing that may be told us concerning
ourselves or our private affairs. Oedipus by his curiosity fell into
great mischief; for, being of a parentage to himself unknown and now
at Corinth where he was a stranger, he went about asking questions
concerning himself, and lighting on Laius he slew him; and then by
the marriage of the queen, who was his own mother, he obtained the
government. Not contented with the thoughts of being thus happy, he
must needs once more (against all the persuasions of his wife) be
enquiring concerning himself; when, meeting with an old man that was
privy to the whole contrivance, he pressed him earnestly to reveal the
secret. And when he now began to suspect the worst, the old man cried
out,

Alas! So sad a tale to tell I dread;

but he, burning with impatience of knowing all, replied,

And I to hear’t: but yet it must be said.[215]

Thus oddly mixed with pain and pleasure is this restless itch of
curiosity, that, like a healing wound, will hazard the loss of blood
rather than want the seeming ease of being rubbed and scratched. But
such as either by good nature or good discipline are free from this
disease, and have experienced the invaluable felicity of a calm and
undisturbed spirit, will rather rejoice in being ignorant than desire
to be informed of the wickedness and the miseries that are in the
world, and will sit down well satisfied in this opinion,

How sage and wise art thou, oblivion![216]

15. Wherefore, as a farther help to check the impatience of our
curiosity, it will contribute much to practise such acts of abstinence
as these. If a letter be brought thee, lay it aside for some time
before thou read it; and do not (as many do) eagerly fall upon the seal
with tooth and nail, as soon as ever it comes to thy hands, as if it
were scarce possible to open it with sufficient speed; when a messenger
returns, do not hastily rise up and run towards him, as if thou couldst
not hear what he had to say time enough; and if any one makes an offer
to tell thee something that is new, say that thou hadst rather it were
good and useful.

When, at a public dissertation I sometime made at Rome, Rusticus
(who afterwards perished by the mere envy of Domitian) was one of my
auditors, a messenger comes suddenly in with an express from Caesar;
upon which, when I offered to be silent till he had perused the paper,
he desired me to proceed, nor would so much as look into it till the
discourse was ended and the audience dismissed; all that were present
much admiring the gravity of the man. In great persons, whose power
encourages them to greater licentiousness, this vicious curiosity is
hardly curable; for when it is arrived in them to the consistence of an
inveterate habit, they will never undergo those previous restraints
upon their outward actions which are necessary to destroy the evil
habit within them. For such as are thus inured will be breaking up
other men’s letters, intruding upon the privacies of their friends,
making bold enquiries into the unfathomable mysteries of religion,
profaning sacred places and holy offices by their coming where and
doing what they ought not, and even prying into the most secret acts
and discourses of princes; all or any of which odious practices it will
be hard for any one after long custom to forbear, but especially for
great persons.

16. And indeed princes themselves—who are concerned to have as
particular knowledge of all things as they can, and to whom it is in
some sort necessary for the ends of government to maintain spies and
intelligencers about them—are yet usually hated for nothing more than
their retaining this lewd sort of people in quality of eavesdroppers
of state and public informers. The first that employed this kind of
officers was Darius in his younger years, when he could not confide in
himself nor durst trust any one else. The Sicilian tyrants afterwards
planted them in Syracuse; but upon a revolution that happened there,
the people first fell upon these informers, and destroyed them without
mercy. Of near affinity with these are common accusers, which, from
a particular occasion imported in the word, were called sycophants,
fig-blabbers; because, upon the prohibited exportation of that fruit,
they became informers against those that broke this order. Much the
like sort of people were those at Athens, where a dearth of grain
happened and the corn-sellers were commanded to bring out their stores
for public sale; and those that went about listening at the mills and
prying into granaries, that they might find matter of information
against offenders, were thence called aliterians or (if you please)
mill-clackers. Which consideration, superadded to the rest that has
been said, is enough to render this sort of malignant curiosity
extremely execrable, and to be highly abhorred and most carefully
avoided by every man who would desire, for mere reputation’s sake, not
to be ranked among that profligate crew of villains which are looked
upon as the most detestable of all mankind.

HOW A MAN MAY BE SENSIBLE OF HIS PROGRESS IN VIRTUE.

MY FRIEND SOSSIUS SENECIO,

1. Is it possible, do you think, that all the arguments in the world
can make a man sensibly assured that he is a proficient in virtue, upon
this supposition, that his proceedings do not in the least alleviate
and abate his folly, but that the vice in him, weighing in equal
balance against his good inclinations, holds him down, as

Heavy lead pulls down the yielding net?

In the study of music or grammar, I am sure, such a conclusion would be
very absurd; for the scholar could never be certain that he had made
any improvement in those sciences, if all the while he is a learning he
did not exhaust by little and little his former ignorance about them,
but remained during the whole progress of his application under the
same degree of unskilfulness as at first setting out.

The like may be said of those that are under the hands of a physician.
According to this assertion, if the patient take physic which does
not recruit his strength or give him ease by abating the severity of
the distemper, it is absolutely impossible that he should discern any
alteration in himself, before the contrary habit is perfectly and in
the highest degree induced, and his body thoroughly sound and well.
As in these instances you cannot say the persons have advanced any
thing, so long as they perceive no sensible change in themselves by
the abatement of the contrary weight, and do not find that their minds
are elevated, as it were, in the opposite scale; just so, in truth,
is it with those that profess philosophy. They cannot be assured of
any progress or improvement, if the soul do not gradually advance and
purge off the rest of its former imperfections, but still lie under
the like equal pressure and grievance of pure, absolute, unmixed evil,
till it have attained the state of perfect, supreme good; for the truth
of it is, a wise man cannot in a moment of time change from the lowest
degree of vice imaginable to the most heroic perfection of virtue, if
he only make a brisk attempt to throw off vice all at once, and do not
constantly and resolutely endeavor by little and little to lighten the
burthen and dispossess the evil habit of it.

You know very well how much trouble those give themselves who maintain
this assertion, and what strange questions they raise with regard to
it,—for instance, why a wise virtuous man should never perceive how he
became such, but should either be quite ignorant, or at least doubt,
that ever by little and little, now adding something, now subtracting
and removing others, he advanced to the aggregate perfection of virtue.
Now if (as they affirm) the change from bad to good were either so
quick and sudden, as that he that was extremely vicious in the morning
may become eminently virtuous at night, or that any one going to bed
wicked might chance to rise a virtuous man next morning, and, having
all the former day’s errors and imperfections absolutely removed out of
his mind, might say to them, as it is in the poet,

Vain dreams! farewell, like spectres haste away,
At the new light of virtue’s glorious day;[217]

do you think that any one in the world could be ignorant of so
extraordinary a conversion, and perfectly shut his eyes upon the beams
of virtue and wisdom so fully and manifestly breaking in upon his soul?
In my opinion, if any person should have Caeneus’s foolish wish, and
be changed (as it is reported he was) from one sex to the other, it
is more probable that such a one should be altogether ignorant of the
metamorphosis, than that any should, from a lazy, unthinking, debauched
fellow, commence a wise, prudent, and valiant hero, and from a sottish
bestiality advance to the perfection of divine life, and yet know
nothing at all of the change.

2. It is very good advice, Measure the stone by your rule, and not
your rule by the stone. But the Stoics have not observed it; for they,
not applying principles to things, but forcing things which have no
foundation of agreement in nature to agree to their principles, have
filled philosophy with a number of difficulties. One of the hardest
to be solved is this, that all men whatsoever (except him who is
absolutely perfect) are equally vicious. Hence is that enigma, called
progress or proficiency, which, though it has puzzled the learned to
solve, is in my opinion very foolish; for it represents those that have
advanced a little, and are partly free from inordinate passions and
distempers of mind, to be as unhappy as those that are guilty of the
most heinous enormities. And indeed the assertion is so absurd, that
their own actions are enough to confute it; for while they maintain
in their schools that Aristides and Phalaris are equally unjust, that
Brasidas and Dolon are equal cowards, and that Plato and Meletus are
equally senseless, still in all affairs of life they seem to reject
and avoid the latter of these, as too harsh and severe to be softened
into compliance, but credit and quote the former in all their writings,
as persons of extraordinary worth and esteem. This is what the Stoics
assert.

3. But we, who can better agree with Plato in this point, finding by
observation that in all kinds of evils, especially that of a weak and
unmanaged disposition of mind, there are several degrees of more and
less (for herein one advance differs from another, that the miserable
darkness which the soul lies under begins more sensibly to abate, when
reason by little and little illuminates and purges the soul), may be
bold to affirm that the change from bad to good is very easily and
manifestly discernible; not as if one were drawn out of a pit on a
sudden, and could give no account of the degrees of the ascent, but so
plain that the several steps and advances may be computed.

The first argument that comes in my mind is this, by way of simile;
pray examine it. You know the art of navigation; when the seamen
hoist sail for the main ocean, they give judgment of their voyage by
observing together the space of time and the force of the wind that
driveth them, and compute that, in all probability, in so many months,
with such a gale, they have gone forward to such or such a place. Just
so it is in the study of philosophy; one may, if he mind it, give a
probable conjecture of a scholar’s proceedings. He that is always at
his business, constantly upon the road, never makes any steps or halts,
nor meets with obstacles and lets in the way, but under the conduct
of right reason travels smoothly, securely, and quietly along, may be
assured that he has one true sign of a proficient. This of the poet,

Add many lesser numbers in account,
Your total will to a vast sum amount,[218]

not only holds true as to the increase of money, but also may serve as
a rule to the knowledge of the advance of every thing else, especially
of proficiency in virtue. Reason, besides its ordinary influence,
requires the constancy of application and address which is necessary
and usual in all other affairs. Whereas, on the contrary, the irregular
proceedings and inconsistent silly assertions of some philosophers
do not only lay rubs in the way, and break the measures of a virtuous
improvement, but seem to give great advantage to vice, during their
lingering and idling upon their journey, to tempt them into by-paths,
or over-persuade them to return whence they set out.

Astronomers tell us that planets, after they have finished their
progressive motion, for some small time acquiesce and become
stationary, as they term it. Now in the study of philosophy it is
not so; there is no point of rest or acquiescence during the whole
procedure, for the nature of progress is to be always advancing, more
or less. The scales in which our actions are, as it were, weighed
cannot at all stand in equilibrio, but our soul is continually either
raised by the addition of good, or cast with the counterpoise of evil.

Therefore, as the oracle told the Cirrhaeans that they ought to
fight continually, day and night; so you and every wise man ought to
be perpetually upon your guard, and if you can be assured that you
maintain a constant combat with vice, that you are always at enmity
with it and never so much as come to terms, or receive any diversions,
applications, or avocations, as so many heralds from the enemies’
camp, in order to a treaty with it; then you may, with a great deal
of confidence and alacrity, go on with the management of your warlike
expedition, and very reasonably at last expect a conquest, and enjoy a
crown of righteousness for your reward.

4. It is another very good argument to prove that by labor and exercise
you have shaken off all stupidity and sluggishness of temper, and that
you are arrived at a perfection of virtue, if for the future your
resolutions be more firm and your application more intense than they
were when you first set out. This appears true, if you but observe its
contrary; for it is a very bad sign if, after a small time spent in
trial, you find many and repeated intermissions, or your affections
yielding or cool in the pursuit. This may be illustrated by what
is observable in the growth of a cane. At first it appears above
ground with a full and pleasing sprout, which by little and little,
taper-wise, by a continued and equal distribution of matter, rises to
a very great height. Towards the root you may observe that there are
formed certain steps and joints, which are at a considerable distance
from one another, because (there) the juice is plentiful and strong.
But toward the top the nutrimentive particles vibrate and palpitate,
as if they were quite spent with the length of their journey, and
thereupon, you see, they form themselves many small, weak, and tender
joints, as so many supports and breathing-places. So it happens with
those that study philosophy: at first setting out they take long
steps and make great advances; but if, after some attempts, they
perceive not in themselves any alteration for the better, but meet
with frequent checks and avocations the further they go, ordinarily
they faint, make any excuses to be off from their engagement, despond
of ever going through with it, and thereupon proceed no farther. But,
on the contrary, he that is winged with desire flies at the proposed
advantage, and by a stout and vigorous pursuit cuts off all pretences
of delay from crowding in upon him or hindering his journey.

In love, it is a sign the passion is predominant, if the lover be
not only pleased in the enjoyment of the beloved object (for that’s
ordinary), but also troubled and grieved at the absence of it. After
a manner not unlike this, many youngsters (as I’ve observed) stand
affected at the study of philosophy. At first, they buckle to their
work with the greatest concern and emulation imaginable; but as soon
as ever they are diverted, either by business or any little pretences,
the heat of their affection immediately flies off, and they sit down
ignorant and very well content. But

He that perceives the pleasing sting of love,
Whose poignant joy his trembling heart doth move,[219]

will not only show that he is a proficient by his virtuous demeanor and
agreeableness in all company and discourse; but if he be called from
his business, you may perceive him all on fire, in pain, and uneasy in
whatsoever he does, whether alone or in company, and so concerned that
he is unmindful of his best friends till he is restored to the quest of
his beloved philosophy. All of us ought to imitate such a noble example
in all our studies. We must not be affected with good discourse only
while we are in place, as we are with rich fragrant perfumes (which
we never mind, but while we are a smelling to them); but if by chance
marriage, an estate, love, or a campaign take us from our business, we
must still hunger and thirst after virtue; and the more our proficiency
is advanced, by so much the more ought our desire to know what we
have not attained disquiet and excite us to the further pursuit and
knowledge of it.

5. The grave account which Hesiod gives of proficiency is, in my
judgment, either the very same, or comes very near to this which I
have now set down. Proficiency is (says he) when all difficulties
are removed, all unevenness smoothed and cleared, and the way made
easy and passable. It must be smoothed by frequent exercise, cleared
by beams of divine light that guide the way to true philosophy,
nothing at all of the clouds of doubt, error, or inconstancy in good
resolutions remaining, which are as usually incident to learners in
their first attempts upon philosophy, as distraction and solicitudes
are to those who, sailing from a known land, cannot yet discover the
place whither they are bound. Thus I have known impatient sophisters
skip over common and ordinary notions, before they have learned or
attained better, and lose themselves in the middle of their journey
in so troublesome a maze, that they would be willing to return (if
they could) to their primitive state of quiet, inactive ignorance.
Sextius, a nobleman of Rome, may serve for an instance of this. He
quitted all offices and places of honor, that he might more freely and
undisturbedly apply himself to the study of philosophy. At first he
met with many difficulties; and finding himself unable to encounter or
conquer them, out of very despair and despondency, he had thoughts of
throwing himself out of a little boat into the river Tiber. Parallel
to this is a merry story told of Diogenes of Sinope; when he first put
on his gown, it happened to be at a time when the Athenians celebrated
a festival with extraordinary banquets, night-drinking, sports, and
pageantry usual at great solemnities. The philosopher, as he lay in
the holidays in the corner of the street, muffled up in his clothes,
to try if he could take a nap, had some running thoughts in his head,
which checked the resolutions he had taken as to a philosophical life,
and troubled him extremely. He reasoned with himself, that there
was no necessity for his entering into so troublesome and singular
a way of living, that he thereby deprived himself of all the sweets
and pleasures of life, and the like. While he was thinking thus with
himself, he espied (as the story goes) a mouse venturing toward him,
and now and then nibbling at a mouldy crust that he had in his pouch.
This sight (which is much) turned his thoughts, and made him vexed and
troubled at himself as much on the other side. What (says he) is the
matter with thee, Diogenes? Thou seest this tiny mouse lives well, and
is very glad of thy scraps; but thou, who must needs be a person of
quality, forsooth, art extremely sorry and out of humor, because thou
dost not feast upon down-beds, and canst not have the genteel privilege
at this merry time to be drunk as well as others.

Another rational argument of gradual proficiency is when avocations
are not frequent upon us, and when they happen, very short; while the
substantial rules and precepts of wisdom, as if they had been violently
driven out, presently return upon our minds, and dispossess all empty
trouble and disconsolate thoughts.

6. And because scholars do not only fancy to themselves difficulties
big enough to divert their weak resolutions, but also often meet with
serious persuasions from their friends to leave their studies, and
because sometimes such smart jests and drolls are put upon them as have
often discouraged, frequently quite converted, the endeavors of some;
it may seem to you a very good argument of a proficient, if you find
yourself indifferent and unconcerned in that point. As, for example,
not to be cut to the heart and repine, when you are told that such and
such persons by name, your equals once, live splendidly at court, have
married great fortunes, or have appeared publicly at the head of a
great many freeholders, that are ready to vote for them for some great
office or representative’s place. He that is neither discomposed nor
very much affected by such news as this is manifestly in the right,
and has philosophy by the surer handle. For it is impossible we should
leave admiring things which most men esteem, if the habit of virtue
were not deeply rooted in us. To avoid passionately what every one
cries down may be in some persons the effect of anger and ignorance;
but utterly to despise what is admired abroad is a certain sign of true
and solid wisdom and resolution. With what satisfaction and complacency
many persons advanced to such a height of virtue compare themselves
with others, and break out in these verses of Solon!

We will not change Virtue’s immortal crown
For a whole mine of gold.
Gold is uncertain; but what we possess
Is still our own, and never can be less.

None can deny but that it was very great in Diogenes to compare his
shifting from the city of Corinth to Athens, and from Thebes to
Corinth, to the king of Persia’s taking his progress in the spring
to Susa, in winter to Babylon, and to Media in summer. Nor was it an
argument of a much less spirit in Agesilaus, who, hearing this same
king of Persia styled the Great, presently asked, In what is he greater
than I, if he be not juster than I am? Aristotle himself had exactly
such notions in the like case; for, writing to Antipater about his
scholar Alexander, he says of him, that he ought not to value himself
in this respect, that he was advanced above others; for whoever had a
true notion of God was really as great as he. And Zeno too deserves
to be mentioned, who, hearing Theophrastus commended above any of the
philosophers for his number of scholars, put it off thus: His choir is
indeed larger than mine, but mine has the sweeter voices.

7. From all these instances you may collect this great truth, that
whenever you do, by setting the comforts of virtue and the difficulties
and errors of study one against the other, perceive that you have
utterly expelled all emulation, jealousy, and every thing else that
uses to disturb or discourage young men, you may then assuredly
conclude with yourself that you have made very laudable progress.

Another argument of proficiency in virtue is the alteration of your
very style of writing, and of your way of managing any argument or
discourse. Most of those that nowadays design for scholars (in ordinary
speaking) do prosecute almost none but popular studies; to furnish
out discourse, and make themselves, as the phrase is, plausible men;
some few of them there are who, like silly larks, are taken with the
glaring light of natural philosophy, and, measuring themselves by their
own levity and conceit, think they are able presently to attain the
height of that science. Others like young whelps (’tis Plato’s simile)
love to snap and bite at one another, only to gratify a contentious,
sceptical, and sophistical humor, which they at first got by bad
tuition and ill-managed studies. Some again, as soon as ever they are
initiated in the principles of logic, presently commence sophisters.
Others spend their whole time in collecting sentences and historical
narrations. These (as Anacharsis said of the Grecians, that he saw
no occasion they had for money, but only to count and tell it over)
have nothing at all to do, but go about singing and repeating what
they have collected into commonplace books, without any other benefit
or satisfaction from their labors. To these you may apply that of
Antiphanes, which one ingeniously turned to Plato’s scholars. This
Antiphanes said merrily, that in a certain city the cold was so intense
that words were congealed as soon as spoken, but that after some time
they thawed and became audible, so that the words spoken in winter were
articulated next summer. Even so, the many excellent precepts of Plato,
which he instilled into the tender ears of his scholars, were scarce
perceived and distinguished by many of them, till they grew men and
attained the warm vigorous summer of their age.

Such a cool disposition to virtue and philosophy, as that philosopher
said was in Plato’s scholars when young, often lasts in the most of
us (as was hinted before) till our judgments grow to a solid firmness
and maturity, and we begin to value those precepts that are able to
beget a composure and greatness of mind, and diligently to trace and
follow those discourses and precepts whose tracks (as it is in Aesop’s
fables) rather look inward than outward, to ourselves rather than
others. Sophocles said of himself, that in writing his tragedies he
first of all abated and pricked the tumor of Aeschylus’s invention,
then corrected the harshness and over artifice of his composition, and,
last of all, changed his very style and elocution, the thing which is
most considerably persuasive, and which most of all conduces to good
manners. Even so, young students, when they pass from the fulness and
luxuriancy of panegyric and declamation to that more solid part of
philosophy that regulates manners and smooths all rugged and disorderly
passions, then begin really to attain true and solid proficiency.

8. Hereupon let me advise you this,—whenever you read the writings
or hear the orations of the philosophers, attend always things more
than words, and be not taken with what is curious and of a delicate
thread and contexture, more than that which is strong, nervous,
and beneficial. So also, in perusing poems or histories, be sure
that nothing escape you that is appositely said, in relation to
the cultivating of manners or the calming turbulent, immoderate
passions; but always give it a note, and make it surely your own.
Simonides said that a student in philosophy should be like a bee. That
laborious creature, when it is amongst flowers, makes it its business
industriously to extract the yellow honey out of them all; while
others care and seek for nothing else except the smell and the color.
So, while some others employ their time in reading the poets only for
diversion, or for the wit and fancy which usually adorn their works,
you (my dear friend) like a bee amongst a swarm of drones, observe
and collect what is sweet, palatable, and worthy your pains, and seem
already, by your constant custom and application, to have attained a
perfect knowledge of what is eminently good and proper.

As to those that peruse the works of Plato and Xenophon only for the
style’s sake, and do cull out what is elegant and Attic, as the cream
and flower of those authors, pray what do they do but as it were
admire the fragrancy and flavor of medicinal drugs, yet, at the same
time, neither understand nor enquire after their healing and purgative
qualities? Whereas, those that have advanced to a higher degree of
perfection can extract benefit, not only from philosophical discourses,
but also from every thing they see or do, and thence draw something
that may be proper and fit for their purpose. I will give you some
examples of Aeschylus and other very eminent men, which may be very pat
to this purpose. Aeschylus chanced to be a spectator at the Isthmian
games, where some were engaged at sword play; seeing one of the
combatants wounded, and observing that the theatre immediately made a
great shouting and hollowing upon it, he jogged one Ion, an inhabitant
of the island Chios, who sat next to him, and whispered him thus, Do
you see what exercise can do? He that is wounded holds his peace, and
the spectators cry out.

Brasidas, the Lacedaemonian captain, by chance caught a mouse
among some dry figs; and, being bit by her, let her go, with this
exclamation, By Hercules! there is no creature so little or so weak,
that it cannot preserve its life if it dares but defend it.

Diogenes may serve for a thousand instances; when he saw a boy drink
out of the palm of his hand, he threw away his dish, which he used to
carry always with him in his wallet. Thus sedulity and application have
a singular virtue to make us knowing and able to extract motives to
virtue from every thing that we meet with.

Nor is it a difficult matter to attain such a temper of mind, if
the candidates for virtue intermix discourse and reading with
their actions; not only “exercising themselves amidst dangers” (as
Thucydides[220] said to some), but also engaging pleasures, disputing
hard questions, examining precedents, pleading causes, and so (to try
themselves thoroughly) undertaking some magistracy or public office,
giving thereby demonstration of their opinions and resolution, or
rather establishing their resolution by exercise. Whereas, those that
are not bred to it, but like novices spy out and catch at any thing
that is curious in books, and pragmatically run away with it either
to the Exchange, the College, or some club or tavern, deserve no
more the name of philosophers, than those quacks that only truck off
vile drugs and potions merit the character and value of physicians.
Those sophisters seem to me not unlike the bird mentioned in Homer,
and to have something of its quality. Whatsoever they catch abroad
they presently bring home with them, and cram it into their unfledged
chicks, their illiterate scholars, starving their own empty crops the
while, as the poet has it; for they neither digest nor convert what
they take into true nourishment.

9. It is then indispensably our duty so to manage our discourse, that
it may be beneficial both to ourselves and others, we not incurring
the censure of being thought vain-glorious or arrogant by any; to be
always readier to hear than to teach; and, especially, so to abate
and moderate all vehemency and passionate quarrelling about trivial
questions, as that we may cease to attend and manage disputations with
the same indifferency as you may have seen some exercise hurlbats and
cudgelling,—that is, so as to leave the stage with more satisfaction
for having had a true hit or coming off conqueror, than for having
either learned ourselves or taught our antagonist any manner of skill
by the engagement.

An evenness and mildness of temper in all such affairs, which never
will suffer us to enter the lists with vehemency and passion, nor to
be hot and concerned in settling an argument, nor to scold and give
bad words when we have vanquished our adversary, nor to be very much
dejected if we chance to be quite baffled, is (I think) a true sign
of a great proficient in virtue. Aristippus was a great example of
this; for when in a set disputation he was baffled by the sophistry
and forehead of an impudent, wild, and ignorant disputant, and
observed him to be flushed and high with the conquest; Well! says the
philosopher, I am certain, I shall sleep quieter to-night than my
antagonist.

Not only upon the close and event of our philosophical contests, but
even in the midst of disputation, we may (privately) take an estimate
of this good quality in us, which is a sign of a true proficient;
for example, if, upon a greater appearance of auditors than was
expected, we be not afraid nor in confusion; if, at the thinness of the
congregation, when there are but a few to hear us, we be not dejected
and troubled; and lastly, if, when we are to speak before a numerous or
honorable assembly, we do not, for want of fitting preparation, miss
the opportunity for ever.

It is reported that two as famous orators as ever were, Demosthenes
and Alcibiades, were somewhat weak and faulty in this point. The
timorousness of the former is known to every school-boy; and as for
Alcibiades, though he was (as must be confessed) as sagacious and
happy in his thoughts as any man whatever, yet, for want of a little
assurance in speaking a thing, he very often miserably lost himself
in his pleadings; for he would falter and make pauses in the very
middle of his orations, purely for want of a single word or some neat
expression, that he had in his papers but could not presently remember.
To give you another instance of the prince of poets, Homer; he was so
blinded with an over-confidence of his abilities in poetry, that he
has slipped a false quantity, and left it on record, in the very first
verse of his Iliads.

Seeing then the learnedest men and greatest artists have failed and may
fail for want of caution or confidence, it ought more nearly to concern
those that earnestly follow virtue, not to slip the least opportunity
of improvement, either by company or otherwise; and not overmuch to
regard the throng or applause of the theatre, when they do exercise or
make any solemn harangue.

10. Nor is it enough that one take care of all his discourses and
orations; but he ought also to observe that the whole tenor of his
actions be guided by profit rather than vain pomp, and by truth
rather than ostentation. For if a passionate lover who has placed his
affection upon any beloved object seeks no witnesses to attest its
sincerity, but has such an eager desire when alone and in private,
that, like a covered flame, it burns more vigorously and insensibly for
being shut up; much more ought a moralist and a philosopher who has
attained both the habit and exercise of virtue sit down self-contented,
and applaud himself in private, neither needing nor desiring encomiasts
or auditors from abroad.

There is an humor in some of the poets, of an old peevish housekeeper,
that calls to his maid aloud: Do you see, Dionysia (that is his maid’s
name), I am now pleased, and have laid by all choler and passion. Just
such like is the practice of some, who, as soon as they have done any
thing which is obliging and civil, presently blaze it abroad, and
turn their own heralds. Such men show plainly that they look beyond
themselves for satisfaction; that they are desirous of praise and
applause; and that they never were admitted near spectators of virtue,
never saw her in her noble, royal dress, but only had some transient
sight of her in a dream or an empty airy phantasm; and indeed, that
they expose their actions to the public, as painters do their pictures,
to be gazed at and admired by the gaping multitude.

Another sign of a proficient in virtue is, when the proficient has
given any thing to his friend or done any kindness for any one, if he
keeps it to himself and does not blab it to anybody; and (which is
more) if he hath voted right against a majority of biassed suffragans,
withstood the dishonest attempts of some rich and powerful man,
generously rejected bribes when offered, abstained from inordinate
drinking when athirst and alone, or at night, when none sees or knows
what he does, lastly, if he hath conquered the briskest attempts
of love (as is said of Agesilaus); if (I say) he contain himself
from speaking of such actions, and do not in company boast of his
performances. This I affirm,—such a one as can prove and try himself
by himself, and be fully satisfied in the verdict of his conscience,
as of an unexceptionable witness and spectator of what is right and
good, shows plainly that his reason looks inward and is well rooted
within him, and that the man (as Democritus said) is accustomed to take
satisfaction from himself.

To borrow a simile from husbandmen and those that are concerned in the
business of the fields, they are always best pleased to see those ears
of corn which decline and by reason of their fulness bend downwards to
the earth, but look upon those as empty, deceitful, and insignificant,
which, because they have nothing in them, grow bolt upright and appear
above the rest. So it is amongst students in philosophy; those that are
most empty-headed, and have least firmness and solidity, have always
the greatest share of confidence, formality, and stiffness in their
address, look biggest, walk with the most state, and top upon and
condemn others, with the highest arrogance and severity of any living.
But when once their brains begin to fill and become well poised with
solid notions, they look down into themselves, and quite lay aside that
insolent and arrogant humor, which is proper only to youngsters.

Give me leave to illustrate this by one simile more. When you pour
water into bottles or any other vessels, upon its being instilled
into them, the air that was in them before presently flies out and
gives place to the more substantial body. Even so it is with those
that have had many good precepts instilled into them, and their minds
replenished with solid truths. They presently find that all empty
vanity flies off; that the imposthume of pride breaks; that they do not
value themselves for beard and gown only, but bend their actions and
endeavors to the bettering of their rational faculties; and, lastly,
that when they reprove they begin at home, turning the edge of their
satire and invective upon themselves, even when at the same time
they are civil and complaisant to all others beside. It is indeed an
argument of a generous and truly brave disposition in a scholar, not to
assume the name and character of one, and, as some use to do, to put
the philosopher amongst his titles; but if any out of respect chance to
give him that compellation, to be surprised, blush, and with a modest
smile answer him in that of the poet,

You compliment your friend; he whom you so commend
Must needs be more than man,—far more than I pretend.[221]

Aeschylus says of a young woman that, if ever she have played the
wanton, you may discover it in her eyes, and read her affections in
amorous glances which she cannot conceal; so a young scholar, if he be
once entered in the mysteries and have tasted the sweets of philosophy,
cannot possibly suppress the passion and concern for it; as Sappho
says, his tongue falters when he would speak its praise; his heart is
warm with affection;

A secret flame does run through every part.

You would admire and love the assurance and composedness of his looks,
the affectionateness of his eyes, and especially the winning decency
and agreeableness of his words and expressions.

Those that are to be initiated in the ceremonies of the Gods run
to their temples at first with a great deal of noise, clamor, and
rudeness; but as soon as the solemnity is seen and over, they
attend with a profound silence and religious fear. So it is with the
candidates in philosophy; you may perceive a throng, noise, and pother
about the school-doors, by reason that several press thither eagerly,
rudely, and violently for reputation, more than learning; but when
you are once in, and manifestly see the great light, as if some royal
shrine were opened unto you, you are presently possessed with a quite
different notion of things; are struck with silence and admiration,
and begin, with humility and a reverend composure, to comply with and
follow the divine oracle. That which Menedemus said in another case
is very apposite to this sort of men. Those that went to the school
of Athens were first of all (σοφοί) _wise_, next (φιλόσοφοι)
_lovers of wisdom_, then orators, and at last, in course of time,
plain common men; for the longer they applied themselves to study and
philosophy, so much the more all vanity, pride, and pedantry abated in
them, and the nearer they came to plain, downright, honest men.

11. Again, as it is with those that are indisposed and out of
order,—some, if a tooth or finger do but ache, presently run to a
physician; others send for one to their houses, if they find themselves
but the least feverish and desire his advice and assistance; but those
that are either melancholical, or but any ways crazed in their heads,
can not endure so much as the looks of a physician, but either keep
out of sight when he comes or command him to be gone, being altogether
insensible of their condition,—so, in persons that commit any heinous
crime or fall into any error, I look upon those as perfectly incurable,
who take it ill to be admonished of their fault and look upon reproof
and admonition as the greatest rudeness and incivility in the world,
whereas those that can quietly hearken and submit to the advice of
friends and superiors deserve a more favorable opinion, and may be
thought to be of a much better disposition. But the greatest character
of hopeful men, and such as may be probably excellent proficients in
time, belongs to those who, upon a commission of a fault, immediately
apply themselves to such as will reprove and correct them; who plainly
disclose their grief and open their malady; who do not rejoice in
concealing their distemper, and are not content to have their troubles
unknown; lastly, who make a full confession of what they have done
amiss, and desire the help of a friend to examine and direct them for
the future. Diogenes, I am sure, was of this opinion. He said, that
whosoever would be certainly and constantly in the right must get
either a virtuous good friend or an incensed ill-natured enemy to his
monitor; the one by gentle admonition to reprove and persuade him, the
other to work upon him by severity, and awe him into a virtuous course
of life.

There is a sort of men in the world, that are so vain and foolish
as to take a pride in being the first discoverers of their own
imperfections; if they have but a rent or spot in their clothes, or
have got a torn pair of shoes on, they are the most forward of any to
tell it in company; and (which is more) they are very apt, out of a
silly, empty, arrogant humor, to make themselves the subject of their
drollery, if they are of a dwarfish stature or any way deformed; yet
(which is strange) these very men, at the very same time, endeavor to
excuse and palliate the internal imperfections of the mind and the
more ugly deformities of the soul, as envy, evil-custom, detraction,
voluptuousness, &c., and will not suffer any one either to see or probe
them. These are, as it were, so many sore places, and they cannot
endure to have them touched and meddled with. Such men as these (I may
be bold to say) have very few signs of proficiency, or rather none at
all.

Now, on the contrary, he that examines his own failings with the
greatest severity, that impartially blames or corrects himself as
often as he does amiss, or (which is almost as commendable) grows
firmer and better by present advice, as well as more able and ready to
endure a reprimand for the future, seems to me truly and sincerely to
have rejected and forsaken vice.

It is certainly our duty to avoid all appearance of evil, and to be
ashamed to give occasion even to be reputed vicious; yet evil reports
are so inconsiderable to a wise man, that, if he have a greater
aversion to the nature of evil than to the infamy that attends it,
he will not fear what is said of him abroad, nor what calumnies are
raised, if so be he be made the better by them. It was handsomely said
of Diogenes, when he saw a young spark coming out of a tavern, who at
the sight of him drew back: Do not retire, says he, for the more you
go backward, the more you will be in the tavern. Even so every vicious
person, the more he denies and palliates vice, the more aggravates and
confirms it, and with surer footing goes farther into wickedness; like
some persons of ordinary rank and quality, who, while they assume above
themselves, and out of arrogance would be thought rich, are made really
poor and necessitous, by pretending to be otherwise.

Hippocrates, a man of wonderful skill in physic, was very ingenuous
in this point, and fit to be imitated by the greatest proficients in
philosophy. He confessed publicly, that he had mistaken the nature
of the sutures in the skull, and has left an acknowledgment of his
ignorance upon record, under his own hand; for he thought it very
unworthy a man of his profession not to discover where he was in the
wrong, seeing others might suffer and err by his authority. And,
indeed, it had been very unreasonable, if he, whose business and
concern it was to save others and to set them right, should not have
had the courage to cure himself, and to discover his weakness and
imperfections in his own faculty.

Pyrrhon and Bion (two eminent philosophers) have given rules of
proficiency; but they seem rather signs of a complete habit of virtue,
than a progressive disposition to it. Bion told his friend, that they
then might be assured of their proficiency, when they could endure a
reproof from anybody with the same indifferency and unconcernedness as
they could hear the highest encomiums, even such a one as this of the
poet:

Sir,

Some heavenly flame inspires your breast;
Live great, rejoice, and be for ever blest.[222]

The other, to wit, Pyrrhon, being at sea and in great danger, by reason
of a tempest that arose, took particular notice (as the story goes)
of a hog that was on board, which all the while very unconcernedly
fed upon some corn which lay scattered about; he showed it to his
companions, and told them that they ought to acquire by reading and
philosophy such an apathy and unconcernedness in all accidents and
dangers as they saw that poor creature naturally have.

12. The opinion which is said to be Zeno’s may deserve our
consideration. He said that any one might give a guess at his
proficiency from the observation of his dreams, if when asleep he
fancied nothing that was immodest, nor seemed to consent to any wicked
actions or dishonest intentions, but found his fancy and passions of
his mind undisturbed, in a constant calm, as it were, always serene,
and enlightened with the beams of divine reason. This very notion was
hinted by Plato[223] (as I interpret his words), where he is describing
and delineating the soul which is tyrannical in its nature, and showing
what manner of operations its fantasy and irrational appetite exert.
When a man is asleep, he says, a vicious person designs the satisfying
incestuous lust, has a longing for all sorts of meat indifferently,
whether allowed or prohibited, and satisfies his appetite and desire in
all manner of intemperance which is loose and unregarded, which, in the
day-time, either the laws shame him out of, or fear to offend restrains.

As now those brute beasts that are accustomed to labor will not, if
the reins be let loose, either turn aside or offer to leave the track
or stumble in it, so it is with the brutal faculty of the mind; when
it is once made tame and manageable by the strength of reason, then
it is unwilling carelessly to transgress or saucily to disobey its
sovereign’s commands or to comply with any inordinate lusts, either in
sleep or sickness; but it carefully observes and maintains its dictates
to which it is accustomed, and by frequent exercise advances to perfect
strength and intention of virtue.

We find even in our own nature the strange effects of custom. Man is
naturally able, by much exercise and the use of a stoical apathy,
to bring the body and all its members into subjection, so that not
one organ shall perform its operation,—the eyes shall not burst out
with tears upon the sight of a lamentable object, the heart shall not
palpitate upon the apprehension of fear, and the passions shall not
be roused at the sight of any beautiful person, whether man or woman.
Now it is much more probable that the faculties of the sense may be so
brought in subjection by undergoing such exercise as we speak of, that
all its imaginations and motions may be smoothed and made agreeable
to right reason, even when we are asleep and keep not sentry. It is
reported of Stilpo the philosopher, that he thought he saw Neptune in
his sleep, and that he seemed very much displeased with him, because
he had not (as was usual with his priests) sacrificed an ox in honor
of him. Not in the least daunted at the apparition, he thus boldly
accosted it: Neptune! what’s this business you here complain of? You
come hither like a child, and are angry with me, because I did not
borrow money and run in debt to please you, and fill the city with
costly odors, but privately sacrificed to you in my own house such
ordinary victims as I could get. At this confident reply, Neptune
smiled, and (as the story goes) reached him his hand, as an assurance
of his good-will to him, and told him that for his sake he would send
the Megarians abundance of fish that season.

In the main we may conclude thus much, that those that have clear and
pleasant dreams, and are not troubled with any frightful, strange,
vicious, or irregular apparitions in their sleep, may assure themselves
that they have some indications and dawnings of proficiency; whereas,
on the contrary, those dreams which are mixed with any pain, fear,
cowardly aversions from good, childish exultation, or silly grief, so
that they are both frightful and unaccountable, are like the breaking
waves or the billows of the sea; for the soul, not having attained
a perfect evenness of temper, but being under the formation of laws
and precepts from whose guidance and discovery it is free in time of
sleep, is then slacked from its usual intenseness, and laid open to all
passions whatever.

Whether this temper we speak of be an argument of proficiency, or an
indication of some other habit which has taken deep root in the soul,
grown strong and immovable by all the power of reason, I leave to you
to consider and determine.

13. Seeing then an absolute apathy or freedom from all passions
whatsoever is a great and divine perfection, and, withal, considering
that progress seems to consist in a certain remission and moderation
of those very passions we carry about us, it unavoidably follows, that
if we will observe our passions, with relation to one another and also
to themselves, we may easily find out their differences. For example,
first, we may observe from the passions compared with themselves
whether our desires be now more moderate than they used to be, fear
and anger less and more calm, and whether or no we are more able to
quench the heat and flame of our passions than we used to be.

Secondly, by comparing them with one another, we may observe whether we
now have a greater share of shame than of fear, whether emulation be
without any mixture of envy, whether we have greater desire of glory
than of riches, whether we offend (as the musicians term it) in the
Dorian or base or in the Lydian or treble notes,—that is, whether we
are more inured to abstinence and hardship than otherwise,—whether we
are unwilling rather than forward to appear in public, and, lastly,
whether we are undue admirers of the persons or performances of others,
or despisers both of them and what they can do.

As it is a good sign of recovery of a sick person if the distemper lie
in the less principal parts of the body; so in proficiency, if vicious
habits be changed into more tolerable passions, it is a symptom that
they are going off and ready to be quenched. Phrynis the musician,
to his seven strings adding two more, was asked by the magistrates,
whether he had rather they should cut the upper or lower of them, the
base or treble. Now it is our business to cut off (as it were) both
what is above and below, if we would attain to the true medium and
equality; for proficiency in the first place remits the excess, and
sweetens the harmony of the evil affections, which is (according to
Sophocles)

The madman’s greatest pleasure and disease.

14. We have already said that we ought to transfer our judgment to
action, and not to suffer our words to remain bare and naked words,
but to reduce them to deeds; and that this is the chiefest sign of
a proficient. Now another manifest indication is a desire of those
things we commend, and a readiness to perform those things which we
admire, but whatsoever we discommend, neither to will or endure it. It
is probable that all the Athenians highly extolled the courage and
valor of Miltiades. But Themistocles (who professed that the trophies
of Miltiades broke his sleep, and often forced him out of his bed) did
not only praise and admire what he had done, but was manifestly struck
with a zeal and emulation of his performances. Therefore we may be
assured that we have profited little, while we think it a vanity to
admire those that have done well, and cannot possibly be raised to an
imitation of them.

To love the person of any man is not sufficient, except it have a
mixture of emulation; no more is that love of virtue ardent and
exciting, which does not put us forward, and create in our breasts
(instead of envy to them) a zealous affection for all good men, and
a desire of equal perfection with them. For it is not enough (as
Alcibiades was wont to say) that the heart should be turned upside down
by hearing the discourses of a philosopher, and that the tears should
gush from the eyes; but he that is a proficient indeed, comparing
himself with the designs and actions of a good perfect man, is pricked
at the same with the consciousness of his own weakness, and transported
with hope and desire, and big with irresistible assurance; and indeed
such a one is (as Simonides says) like a little sucking foal running
by the mother’s side, and desires to be incorporated into the very
same nature with a good man. For this is an especial sign of true
proficiency, to love and affect their way of life whose actions we
emulate, and, upon account of an honorable opinion we always entertain
for them, to do as they do. But whosoever he is that entertains a
contentious or malicious design against his betters, let him be assured
that he is possessed with a greedy desire of honor or greatness, but
has neither a true respect nor admiration for virtue.

15. When therefore we once begin so to love good men, as not only
(according to Plato) to esteem the wise man himself happy, and him who
hears his discourses sharer in his felicity, but also to admire and
love his habit, gait, look, and very smile, so as to wish ourselves to
be that very person, then we may be assured that we have made very good
proficiency.

This assurance will be advanced, if we do not only admire good men
in prosperity, but like lovers, who are taken ever with the lisping
and pale looks of their mistresses (as Araspes is said to have been
smitten with the tears and dejected looks of a mournful and afflicted
Panthea), have an affection for virtue in its most mournful dress, so
as not at all to dread the banishment of Aristides, the imprisonment of
Anaxagoras, the poverty of Socrates, nor the hard fate of Phocion, but
to embrace and respect their virtues, even under such injustice, and
upon thoughts of it, to repeat this verse of Euripides,—

How do all fortunes decently become
A generous, well-tuned soul!

This is certain, if any one addresses himself to virtue with this
resolution, not to be dejected at the appearance of difficulty, but
heartily admires and prosecutes its divine perfection, none of the
evil we have spoken of can divert his good intentions. To what I have
said I may add this, that when we go upon any business, undertake any
office, or chance upon any affair whatever, we must set before our
eyes some excellent person, either alive or dead; and consider with
ourselves what Plato for the purpose would have done in this affair,
what Epaminondas would have said, how Lycurgus or Agesilaus would
have behaved themselves, that, addressing ourselves and adorning our
minds at these mirrors, we may correct every disagreeing word and
irregular passion. It is commonly said, that those that have got by
heart the names of the Idaei Dactyli make use of them as charms to
drive away fear, if they can but confidently repeat them one by one;
so the consideration and remembrance of good men, being present and
entertained in our minds, do preserve our proficiency in all affections
and doubts regular and immovable; wherefore you may judge that this is
also a token of a proficient in virtue.

16. You may observe further, that not to be in a confusion, not to
blush, not to hide or correct your clothes or any thing about you, at
the unexpected appearance of an honorable and wise person, but to have
an assurance as if you were often conversant with such, is almost a
perfect demonstration of a very intelligent person.

It is reported of Alexander, that one night seeing a messenger joyfully
running towards him and stretching out his hand, as if he had something
to deliver to him, he said to the apparition, Friend, what news do you
bring me? Is Homer risen from the dead? That admirable monarch thought
that nothing was wanting to his great exploits but such a herald as
Homer.

Consider this, if a young man thrive in the world, it is customary for
him to desire nothing more than to be seen in the company of virtuous
and good men, to show them his whole furniture, his table, his wife and
children, his study, his diary or collections; and he is so pleased
with himself, that he wishes his father or tutor were alive, that they
might see him in so good a way of living; and he could heartily pray
that they were alive, to be spectators of his life and actions. But,
on the contrary, those that have neglected their business, or lost
themselves in the world, cannot endure the sight or company of their
relations without a great deal of fear and confusion.

17. Join this, if you please, to what we said before; for it is no
small sign, if the proficient thus esteem every little fault a great
one, and studiously observe and avoid all. For, as those persons who
despair of ever being rich make little account of small expenses,
thinking that little added to a little will never make any great
sum, but when they come once to have got a competency, and hope to be
at last very rich, it advances their desires, so it happens in the
affairs of virtue;—he that does not quiet his mind by saying with
himself, “What matters it what comes after? if for the present it be so
and so, yet better days will come,” but who attends every thing, and
is not careless if the least vice pass uncondemned, but is troubled
and concerned at it, such a one makes it appear that he has attained
something that is pure, which he brightens by use and will not suffer
to corrupt. For a preconceived opinion that nothing we have is valuable
(according to Aeschylus) makes us careless and indifferent about every
thing.

If any one be to make a dry wall or an ordinary hedge, it matters
not much if he makes use of ordinary wood or common stone, any old
gravestones, or the like; so wicked persons, who confusedly mix
and blend all their designs and actions in one heap, care not what
materials they put together. But the proficients in virtue, who have
already laid the golden solid foundation of a virtuous life, as of
a sacred and royal building, take especial care of the whole work,
examine and model every part of it according to the rule of reason,
believing that it was well said by Polycletus, that the hardest work
remained for them to do whose nails must touch the clay;—that is, to
lay the top stone is the great business and masterpiece of the work.
The last stroke gives beauty and perfection to the whole piece.

OF FORTUNE.

MORTALS’ AFFAIRS FORTUNE NOT COUNSEL RULES.[224]

1. And does not justice rule the affairs of mortals,—nor impartiality,
nor moderation, nor decorum? But was it of Fortune and long of Fortune
that Aristides remained obstinate in his poverty, although he could
have made himself master of much wealth? And that Scipio, when he had
taken Carthage, neither received nor so much as saw any part of the
booty? Was it of Fortune and long of Fortune that Philocrates, having
received a sum of gold of King Philip, laid it out in whores and fish?
And that Lasthenes and Euthycrates, by measuring their happiness by
their bellies and the most abject of follies, lost Olynthus? Was it
of Fortune that Alexander son of Philip refrained from the captive
women himself, and punished those that offered them any indignity;
while Alexander, son of Priam, long of an evil Daemon and Fortune,
first vitiated his host’s wife and then took her away with him, and
filled both the continents with war and calamities? And if such things
as these can come by Fortune, what hinders but that we may as well
plead that cats, goats, and monkeys are constrained by Fortune to be
ravenous, lustful, and ridiculous?

2. But if there be such things to be found as moderation, justice, and
fortitude, how can it stand with reason there should not be such a
thing as wisdom also? And if there be wisdom, how can it be but there
must be good counsel? For moderation is (as they are used to say) a
certain sort of wisdom; and justice cannot subsist without wisdom.
Certainly we call that good counsel and wisdom that render us manful
in pleasures continence and moderation; in dangers and hardships,
endurance and resolution; and in communities and public business,
equality and justice. And therefore if we will needs have it that
the effects of conduct belong to Fortune, let then both the effects
of justice and moderation belong to Fortune also. Nay, by Jove, let
stealing be ascribed to Fortune too, and cutting of purses, and a
lustful lewd life; and let us quit our reasoning quite, and turn
ourselves loose to Fortune, to be carried and driven, like filth and
dust, before an impetuous wind. If there be no such thing as conduct,
it must of necessity follow, that there should be no such thing as
advising about our affairs, nor any consultation or enquiry about
utility; and that Sophocles did talk idly when he said:

Whate’er is sought,
It may be caught;
But what we shun
Will from us run;[225]

and when elsewhere he made this distribution of things:

I learn what’s to be taught,
I seek what’s to be sought;
I beg the rest of Heaven.

For what is to be sought or what is to be learned by mortals, if all
things go by Fortune? And what senate of a republic is not overthrown,
or what council of a prince is not dissolved, if all things are subject
to Fortune?—which we use to upbraid with blindness because we blindly
fall into it. And indeed how can we otherwise choose, when we first
pluck good counsel like our eyes out of our heads, and then take us a
blind guide of our lives?

3. Imagine that now some one of us should say,

Seers’ affairs Fortune not eyesight rules,

nor yet the eyes, which Plato calls light-bearers; and again,

Hearers’ affairs are by blind Fortune ruled,

and not by a certain power receptive of the strokes of the air,
conveyed to it through the organ of the ear and brain. It would beseem
us then, doubtless, to pay a due respect to our sense. But our sight,
hearing, and smelling, with the other parts of our bodies’ faculties,
were bestowed upon us by nature to minister unto good conduct and
discretion. And “It is the mind that sees, and the mind that hears; the
rest are deaf and blind.” And as, were there not a sun, we might, for
all the other stars, pass our days in darkness (as Heraclitus says); so
had man neither mind nor reason, his life would be, for all his senses,
nothing better than that of brutes. But it is by neither Fortune nor
chance that we exceed them and bear sway over them; but Prometheus
(that is, reason) is the cause,

Which gives both horse and ass and oxen strong,
To carry us and ease our labor long,[226]

as Aeschylus speaks. For the greater part of brutes are much happier
than we, as to the fortune and form of their constitution; for some of
them are armed with horns, some with teeth, and some with stings; and
the urchin’s back, (saith Empedocles) bristles with prickly thorns;
others again are shod, others are clad with scales, others with shaggy
hair, and others with hard claws and hoofs; but man alone (as Plato
speaks) was left by Nature naked, unarmed, unshod, and uncovered. But
all those ills she sweetened with one gift,—reason, care, and forecast.

Small is the strength of poor frail man;
Yet by his shifting wit he can
Enslave the arts and properties
Of all on land, in sea and skies.

The lightest and swiftest things are horses; but they run for man. A
dog is a fierce and an angry animal; but it guards man. Fish is the
sweetest thing, and swine the fattest; but they are man’s nourishment
and cheer. What is bigger than an elephant? But this also is become
man’s plaything, and a spectacle at public solemnities, and it learns
to skip, dance, and kneel. Such things as these are not introduced in
vain, but that we may learn by them whither knowledge advances man,
and above what things it sets him, and how he comes to be master, and
exceed all other things.

For we nor boxers nor good wrestlers are,
Nor yet good runners.[227]

Yea, in all these we are far more unhappy than the brutes. But by our
experience, memory, wit, and dexterity (as Anaxagoras speaks) we make
use of what is theirs; we press out their honey, we milk them, we
catch them, and drive them up and down as we please. So that in all
this there is nothing that depends on Fortune, but all on counsel and
forecast.

4. Moreover, the affairs of carpenters are affairs of mortals, and so
are those of copper-founders, builders, and statuaries; amongst whom
yet we can see nothing brought to perfection by chance or at random.
For that there falls in but little of Fortune to an expert artist,
whether founder or builder, but that the most and greatest part of
their workmanship is performed by mere art, hath been thus insinuated
by a certain poet:

Go forth into the street, ye craftsmen all,
Who on grim-visaged Ergana do call,
That’s stuck with sacred baskets all around.

For the trades have Ergana and Minerva for their patroness, and not
Fortune. It is indeed reported of one that, as he was drawing a horse
and had hit right in all the rest, both shapes and colors, but was not
well satisfied with the draught he had made of a puff of froth that
was tempered by the bit and wrought out with the horse’s breathing,
he therefore had often wiped it off; but that at length he in a great
fume struck his sponge full of colors, as it was, against the board,
and that this, as it lighted, to admiration made a most lively impress,
and so filled up what was defective in the piece. This is the only
artificial work of Fortune that history mentions. Artists everywhere
make use of rules, lines, measures, and arithmetical proportions,
that their works may nowhere have in them any thing that is casual or
fortuitous. And the truth is, arts are styled a sort of petty wisdoms,
though they might be much better called certain sheddings or filings
of it sprinkled upon the several needful services of human life; as is
obscurely riddled to us in the fire feigned to have been first divided
by Prometheus, and then scattered up and down the world. For just so,
certain little particles and fragments of wisdom as it were crumbled
and broken small fell into ranks and methods.

5. It seems therefore very strange how it came to pass that arts should
stand in no need of Fortune to compass their proper end, but that which
is the greatest and most complete of all arts, and which is the very
sum of man’s worth and commendation, should prove to be nothing at all.
But there is a kind of good counsel in stretching and slackening of
strings, which they call the art of music; and in dressing of meats,
which we call cookery; and in washing of clothes, which we call the art
of fulling; and we teach our children how to put on their shoes and
clothes, and to take their meat in their right hand, and hold their
bread in their left; as being sensible that even such common things
as these do not come by Fortune, but require attention and heed. But
do the greatest things and the most important to a happy state require
no wisdom, and have no share in rational proceeding and forecast? Yet
no man ever wetted clay and then left it, as if there would be bricks
by chance and Fortune; nor, having provided wool and leather, sat
him down and prayed to Fortune that they might be made clothes and
shoes for him; nor can any man, when he hath amassed together much
gold and silver, and furnished himself with a multitude of slaves and
attendants, and enclosed himself in a great palace with many gates,
and set out costly couches and tables, fancy to himself that, if he
have not wisdom with them, these things will be his happiness, and an
undisturbed, blissful, and unchangeable life. One asked Iphicrates the
general, by way of taunt, what he was? For he was neither spearman nor
archer, nor yet bore light armor. I am (replied he) one that commands
and uses all these.

6. In like manner wisdom is itself neither gold nor silver nor fame
nor wealth nor health nor strength nor beauty. What then is it? It is
what can use all these with decorum, and by means of which every one
of these is made pleasant, commendable, and useful, and without which
they become useless, unprofitable, and prejudicial, and the burthen and
shame of their possessors. Hesiod’s Prometheus therefore gives very
good advice to Epimetheus:

Brother, be sure you never take
A boon from Jove, but giv’t him back,[228]

meaning things of Fortune and external. For, as if he had bid him not
to play on a flute if ignorant of music, nor to read a book if he
knew not his letters, nor to ride if he understood not a horse, so
it would be if he advised him not to govern if a fool, nor to be a
rich man if a miser, and not to marry if apt to be ruled by a woman.
For success above desert is to fools an occasion of misthinking, as
Demosthenes[229] saith; yes, and good fortune above desert is to the
unwise an occasion of misdoing.

OF VIRTUE AND VICE.

1. It is apparent that clothes make a man warm, not by warming him
themselves or by imparting heat to him (for every garment is of itself
cold, which is the reason that we see those that are very hot and in
a fever often shifting and changing one thing for another), but what
heat a man exhales out of himself, that the garment lying close to his
body keeps together and contracts, and when it hath driven it inward,
it will not suffer it again to dissipate. This being the very case of
external affairs too, it is this that cheats vulgar heads, by making
them think that, if they might but enclose themselves in great houses
and heap together abundance of slaves and riches, they might then live
to their own minds. But an agreeable and gay life is not to be found
without us; on the contrary, it is man that out of his own temper, as
out of a spring, adds pleasure and gayety to the things about him:

The house looks merrier when the fire burns.

And wealth is the more agreeable, and fame and power the more
resplendent, when they have the joy of the mind to accompany them;
since we see how that through a mild and tame disposition men can bear
poverty, banishment, and old age easily and sweetly.

2. For as odors perfume threadbare coats and poor rags, while Prince
Anchises’s ulcer sent forth a loathsome purulence,

When the foul tent dript on his purple robe,

even so every state and condition of life, if accompanied with virtue,
is undisturbed and delightful. But when vice is intermixed, it renders
even the things that appear splendid, sumptuous, and magnificent most
distasteful, nauseous, and unacceptable to the possessors.

This man’s thought happy in the market-place,
But when he ope’s his doors, hell is his case;

The woman governs all, commands and brawls.

Though one may without any great difficulty get rid of a wicked
cross-grained wife, if he be but a man and not a slave. But a man
cannot write a bill of divorce to his vice, and thereby free himself
from further trouble, and procure his own repose by living apart; but
it still cohabits with him, and dwells in his very bowels, and cleaves
to him both by night and by day;

It burns without a torch, and hastens crude old age,[230]

being through its vain glory a burthensome fellow-traveller, and
through its voracity a chargeable table-companion, and a troublesome
bed-fellow by breaking and spoiling one’s sleep at night with cares,
anxieties, and surmises. For when he does sleep his body is indeed
at rest and quiet, but his mind is through superstition in terrors,
dreams, and frights.

When in my slumbers sorrows fill me,
Then frightful dreams and visions kill me,

saith one; just thus envy, fear, anger, and lust affect us. For by
day-time our vice, by looking abroad and fashioning herself to the
manner of others, grows shamefaced, and finds herself obliged to
mask her own disorders, and does not yield herself up wholly to her
appetites, but oftentimes resists and struggles with them. But in
times of sleep, when it escapes both the opinions of men and the laws,
and is at the remotest distance from awe and respect, it stirs every
desire, and raises up its malignity and lewdness. For it attempts (as
Plato speaks) the embraces of a mother, it purveys unlawful meats, and
refrains from no sort of action, enjoying villany, as far as it is
practicable, in shades and phantoms, that end in no real pleasure or
accomplishment of desire, but have only power to stir up and enrage
disorders and distempers.

3. Where then is the pleasure of vice, if there be nowhere to be found
either freedom from care or exemption from trouble, or satisfaction or
undisturbedness or repose? A sound complexion and good health of body
give indeed both place and birth to the flesh’s pleasures; but there
cannot be engendered a gayety and cheerfulness in the mind, unless
undauntedness, assurance, or an immovable serenity be the foundation.
Nay, if some hope or satisfaction should simper a little, this would
be soon puddled and disturbed by some sudden eruption of care, like a
smooth sea by a rock.

4. Heap up gold, gather together silver, raise up walks, fill your
house with slaves and the town with debtors; if you do not appease
the disorders of your own mind, and stint your unsatiable desire, and
deliver yourself from fears and cares, you do but rack wine for a man
in a fever, and administer honey to a man disturbed with bile, and
prepare meat and good cheer for people that have the flux or gripes,
who can neither retain it nor be strengthened by it, but are over and
above spoiled by it. Do you not see how sick persons loathe, spit out,
and refuse the finest and most costly meats, though they be proffered
and forced upon them; and how again, when their complexion alters, and
good spirits, sweet blood, and a connatural heat are engendered, they
get up and gladly and willingly eat brown bread, cheese, and cresses?
Such a disposition as this is it that reason works in the mind. And
you will have sufficiency, if you will but learn what a notable and
generous mind is. You will live luxuriously in poverty, and be a
prince; and you will be as much in love with a vacant and private life
as with that of a general or king. If you once apply to philosophy, you
will never live without pleasure, but you will learn to be everywhere
pleased, and with every thing. You will be pleased with wealth for
making you beneficial to many, and with poverty for not having much to
care for; with fame for being honored, and with obscurity for being
unenvied.

CONJUGAL PRECEPTS.

PLUTARCH TO POLLIANUS AND EURYDICE SENDETH GREETING.

Now that the nuptial ceremonies are over, and that the priestess of
Ceres has joined you both together in the bands of matrimony according
to the custom of the country, I thought a short discourse of this
nature might not be either unacceptable or unseasonable, but rather
serve as a kind epithalamium to congratulate your happy conjunction;
more especially, since there can be nothing more useful in conjugal
society than the observance of wise and wholesome precepts, suitable to
the harmony of matrimonial converse. For among the variety of musical
moods and measures there is one which is called Hippothoros, a sort
of composition to the flute and hautboy, made use of to encourage and
provoke stallions to cover mares. But philosophy being furnished with
many noble and profitable discourses, there is not any one subject that
deserves a more serious study than that of wedlock, whereby they who
are engaged in a long community of bed and board are more steadfastly
united in affection, and made more pliable one to another in humor and
condition. To this purpose, having reduced under several short heads
and similes some certain instructions and admonitions which you, as
tutored up in philosophy, have frequently already heard, I send you the
collection as a present, beseeching the Muses so with their presence
to assist the Goddess Venus, that the harmony of your mutual society
and complacency in domestic diligences may outcry the melodious
concords of lute or harp, while you live united together by reason and
philosophy. Therefore it was that the ancients placed the statue of
Venus by that of Mercury, to signify that the pleasures of matrimony
chiefly consist in the sweetness of conversation. They also set the
Graces and Suadela, the Goddess of Eloquence, together, to show that
the married couple were to act only by persuasion, and not to use the
violences of wrangling and contention.

1. Solon advised that the bride should eat a quince before she entered
the nuptial sheets; intimating thereby, in my opinion, that the man
was to expect his first pleasures from the breath and speech of his
new-married bed-fellow.

2. In Boeotia it is the custom, when they veil the virgin bride, to set
upon her head a chaplet of wild asparagus, which from a thorny stalk
affords a most delicious fruit, to let us understand that a new-married
woman, discreetly brooking at the beginning the first distastes of
marriage restraints, grows yieldingly complaisant at length, and makes
conforming wedlock a happiness to each. And indeed such husbands
who cannot bear with the little disdains and first froppishness of
imprudent youth are like to those that choose the sour grapes and leave
to others the ripe delicious clusters. On the other side, those young
ladies that take a disdain to their husbands by reason of their first
debates and encounters may be well compared to those that patiently
endure the sting but fling away the honey.

3. It especially behooves those people who are newly married to avoid
the first occasions of discord and dissension; considering that vessels
newly formed are subject to be bruised and put out of shape by many
slight accidents, but when the materials come once to be settled and
hardened by time, nor fire nor sword will hardly prejudice the solid
substance.

4. Fire takes speedy hold of straw or hare’s fur, but soon goes out
again, unless fed with an addition of more fuel. Thus that same love,
whose flames are nourished only by heat of youth and looser charms of
beauty, seldom proves of long continuance or grows to wedlock maturity,
unless it have taken a deep root in conformity of manners, and mutual
affection be enlivened by the intermixture of souls as well as bodies,
while prudence and discretion feed the noble flame.

5. They who bait their hooks with intoxicated drugs with little pains
surprise the hungry fish, but then they prove unsavory to the taste and
dangerous to eat. Thus women that by the force of charms and philters
endeavor to subdue their husbands to the satisfaction of their pleasure
become at length the wives of madmen, sots, and fools. For they whom
the sorceress Circe had enchanted, being then no better than swine and
asses, were no longer able to please or do her service. But she loved
Ulysses entirely, whose prudence avoided her venomous intoxications and
rendered his conversation highly grateful.

6. They who rather choose to be the mistresses of senseless fools than
the obedient wives of wise and sober husbands are like those people
that prefer misguidance of the blind before the conduct of them that
can see and know the way.

7. They will not believe that Pasiphae, the consort of a prince, could
ever be enamored of a bull, and yet themselves are so extravagant as to
abandon the society of their husbands,—men of wisdom, temperance, and
gravity,—and betake themselves to the bestial embraces of those who are
given wholly to riot and debauchery as if they were dogs or goats.

8. Some men, either unable or unwilling to mount themselves into their
saddles through infirmity or laziness, teach their horses to fall upon
their knees, and in that posture to receive their riders. In like
manner there are some persons who, having married young ladies not
less considerable for the nobility of their birth than their wealthy
dowries, take little care themselves to improve the advantages of such
a splendid conjunction, but with a severe moroseness labor to depress
and degrade their wives, proud of the mastery and vaunting in domestic
tyranny. Whereas in this case it becomes a man to use the reins of
government with as equal regard to the quality and dignity of the woman
as to the stature of the horse.

9. We behold the moon then shining with a full and glorious orb, when
farthest distant from the sun; but, as she warps back again to meet
her illustrious mate, the nearer she makes her approach, the more she
is eclipsed until no longer seen. Quite otherwise, a woman ought to
display the charms of her virtue and the sweetness of her disposition
in her husband’s presence, but in his absence to retire to silence and
reservedness at home.

10. Nor can we approve the saying of Herodotus, that a woman lays
aside her modesty with her shift. For surely then it is that a chaste
woman chiefly vails herself with bashfulness, when, in the privacies
of matrimonial duties, excess of love and maiden reverence become the
secret signals and testimonies of mutual affection.

11. As in musical concords, when the upper strings are so tuned as
exactly to accord, the base always gives the tone; so in well-regulated
and well-ordered families, all things are carried on with the
harmonious consent and agreement of both parties, but the conduct and
contrivance chiefly redounds to the reputation and management of the
husband.

12. It is a common proverb, that the sun is too strong for the north
wind; for the more the wind ruffles and strives to force a man’s upper
garment from his back, the faster he holds it, and the closer he wraps
it about his shoulders. But he who so briskly defended himself from
being plundered by the wind, when once the sun begins to scald the air,
all in a dropping sweat is then constrained to throw away not only
his flowing garment but his tunic also. This puts us in mind of the
practice of most women, who, being limited by their husbands in their
extravagances of feasting and superfluities of habit, presently fill
the house with noise and uproar; whereas, if they would but suffer
themselves to be convinced by reason and soft persuasion, they would of
themselves acknowledge their vanity and submit to moderation.

13. Cato ejected a certain Roman out of the senate for kissing his
wife in the presence of his daughter. It is true, the punishment was
somewhat too severe; but if kissing and colling and hugging in the
sight of others be so unseemly, as indeed it is, how much more indecent
is it to chide and brawl and maunder one at another while strangers
are in company? If lawful familiarity and caresses between man and
wife are not to be allowed but in their private retirements, shall the
bitter interchanges and loud discoveries of invective and inconsiderate
passion be thought an entertainment pleasingly proper for unconcerned
and public ears?

14. As there is little or no use to be made of a mirror, though in a
frame of gold enchased with all the sparkling variety of the richest
gems, unless it render back the true similitude of the image it
receives; so is there nothing of profit in a wealthy dowry, unless the
conditions, the temper, the humor of the wife be conformable to the
natural disposition and inclination of the husband, and he sees the
virtues of his own mind exactly represented in hers. Or, if a fair and
beautiful mirror that makes a sad and pensive visage look jocund and
gay, or a wanton or smiling countenance show pensive and mournful,
is therefore presently rejected as of no value; thus may not she be
thought an angry, peevish, and importunate woman, that louts and
lowers upon the caresses of a husband, and when he courts the pastime
of her affections, entertains him with frumps and taunts, but when she
finds him serious in business, allures him then with her unseasonable
toyings to pleasure and enjoyment? For the one is an offence of
impertinency, the other a contempt of her husband’s kindness. But,
as geometricians affirm that lines and surfaces are not moved of
themselves, but according to the motions of the bodies to which they
belong, so it behooves a woman to challenge no peculiar passion or
affection as her own, but to share with her husband in business, in his
recreations, in his cares, and in his mirth.

15. As they who are offended to see their wives eat and drink freely
in their company do but whet their appetites to glut and gormandize in
corners by themselves; so they who refuse to frolic in retirement with
their wives, or to let them participate of their private pastimes and
dalliances, do but instruct them to cater for their own pleasures and
delights.

16. The Persian kings, when they contain themselves within the limits
of their usual banquets, suffer their married wives to sit down at
their tables; but when they once design to indulge the provocations
of amorous heats and wine, then they send away their wives, and call
for their concubines, their gypsies, and their songstresses, with
their lascivious tunes and wanton galliards. Wherein they do well, not
thinking it proper to debauch their wives with the tipsy frolics and
dissolute extravagances of their intemperance.

If therefore any private person, swayed by the unruly motions of his
incontinency, happen at any time to make a trip with a kind she-friend
or his wife’s chambermaid, it becomes not the wife presently to lower
and take pepper in the nose, but rather to believe that it was his
respect to her which made him unwilling she should behold the follies
of ebriety and foul intemperance.

17. Princes that be addicted to music increase the number of excellent
musicians; if they be lovers of learning, all men strive to excel in
reading and in eloquence; if given to martial exercises, a military
ardor rouses straight the drowsy sloth of all their subjects. Thus
husbands effeminately finical only teach their wives to paint and
polish themselves with borrowed lustre. The studious of pleasure render
them immodest and whorish. On the other side, men of serious, honest,
and virtuous conversations make sober, chaste, and prudent wives.

18. A young Lacedaemonian lass, being asked by an acquaintance of hers
whether she had yet embraced her husband, made answer, No; but that he
had embraced her. And after this manner, in my opinion, it behooves an
honest woman to behave herself toward her husband, never to shun nor
to disdain the caresses and dalliances of his amorous inclinations,
when he himself begins; but never herself to offer the first occasion
of provocation. For the one savors of impudent harlotry, the other
displays a female pride and imperiousness void of conjugal affection.

19. It behooves a woman not to make peculiar and private friendships of
her own, but to esteem only her husband’s acquaintance and familiars
as hers. Now as the Gods are our chiefest and most beneficial friends,
it behooves her to worship and adore only those Deities which her
husband reputes and reverences for such. But as for quaint opinions and
superstitious innovations, let them be exterminated from her outermost
threshold. For no sacrifices or services can be acceptable to the Gods,
performed by women, as it were, by stealth and in secret, without the
knowledge of the husband.

20. Plato asserts those cities to be the most happy and best regulated
where these expressions, “This is mine,” “This is not mine,” are
seldomest made use of. For that then the citizens enjoy in common, so
far as is convenient, those things that are of greatest importance. But
in wedlock those expressions are utterly to be abolished. For as the
physicians say that the right side being bruised or beaten communicates
its pain to the left; so indeed the husband ought to sympathize in the
sorrows and afflictions of the woman, and much more does it become the
wife to be sensible of the miseries and calamities of the husband;
to the intent that, as knots are made fast by knitting the bows of a
thread one within another, so the ligaments of conjugal society may
be strengthened by the mutual interchange of kindness and affection.
This Nature herself instructs us, by mixing us in our bodies; while
she takes a part from each, and then blending the whole together
produces a being common to both, to the end that neither may be able
to discern or distinguish what was belonging to another, or lay claim
to assured propriety. Therefore is community of estate and purses
chiefly requisite among married couples, whose principal aim it ought
to be to mix and incorporate their purchases and disbursements into
one substance, neither pretending to call this hers or that his, but
accounting all inseparably peculiar to both. However, as in a goblet
where the proportion of water exceeds the juice of the grape, yet still
we call the mixture wine; in like manner the house and estate must be
reputed the possession of the husband, although the woman brought the
chiefest part.

21. Helen was covetous, Paris luxurious. On the other side, Ulysses was
prudent, Penelope chaste. Happy therefore was the match between the
latter; but the nuptials of the former brought an Iliad of miseries as
well upon the Greeks as barbarians.

22. The question being put by some of his friends to a certain Roman,
why he had put away his wife, both sober beautiful, chaste, and rich,
the gentleman, putting forth his foot and showing his buskin, said:
Is not this a new, handsome, complete shoe?—yet no man but myself
knows where it pinches me. Therefore ought not a woman to boast either
of her dower, her parentage, or beauty; but in such things as most
delight a husband, pleasantness of converse, sweetness of disposition,
and briskness of humor, there to show nothing of harshness, nothing
distasteful, nothing offensive, but from day to day to study behavior
jocund, blithe, and conformable to his temper. For as physicians are
much more afraid of fevers that proceed from hidden causes, which
have been by little and little contracting for a long time together,
than those that receive their nourishment from apparent and manifest
unconcoctions; thus, if daily continued, the petty snubs and frumps
between man and wife, though perhaps unknown to others, are of that
force that above all things else they canker conjugal affection, and
destroy the pleasure of cohabitation.

23. King Philip so far doted on a fair Thessalian lady, that she
was suspected to have used some private arts of fascination towards
him. Wherefore Olympias labored to get the supposed sorceress into
her power. But when the queen had viewed her well, and duly examined
her beauty, beheld the graces of her deportment, and considered her
discourse bespake her no less than a person of noble descent and
education; Hence, fond suspicions, hence vainer calumnies! said she,
for I plainly find the charms which thou makest use of are in thyself.
Certainly therefore a lawful wife surpasses the common acceptation
of happiness when, without enhancing the advantages of her wealth,
nobility, and form, or vaunting the possession of Venus’s cestus
itself, she makes it her business to win her husband’s affection by her
virtue and sweetness of disposition.

24. Another time the same Olympias, understanding that a young courtier
had married a lady, beautiful indeed, but of no good report, said:
Sure, the Hotspur had little brains, otherwise he would never have
married with his eyes. For they are fools who in the choice of a wife
believe the report of their sight or fingers; like those who telling
out the portion in their thoughts take the woman upon content, never
examining what her conditions are, or whether she is proper to make him
a fit wife or no?

25. Socrates was wont to give this advice to young men that accustomed
themselves to their mirrors:—if ill-favored, to correct their deformity
by the practice of virtue; if handsome, not to blemish their outward
form with inward vice. In like manner, it would not be amiss for a
mistress of a family, when she holds her mirror in her hands, to
discourse her own thoughts:—if deformed, thus, Should I prove lewd
and wicked too?—on the other side, thus the fair one, What if chaste
beside? For it adds a kind of veneration to a woman not so handsome,
that she is more beloved for the perfections of her mind than the
outside graces of her body.

26. Dionysius, the tyrant of Sicily, sent several costly presents of
rich apparel, necklaces, and bracelets to the daughters of Lysander,
which however the father would never permit the virgins to accept,
saying: These gaudy presents will procure more infamy than honor to
my daughters. And indeed, before Lysander, Sophocles in one of his
tragedies had uttered the following sentence to the same effect:

Mistake not, silly wretch; this pompous trim
Rather disgraces than proclaims thee great,
And shows the rage of thy lascivious heat.

For, as Crates said, that is ornament which adorns; and that adorns
a woman which renders her more comely and decent. This is an honor
conferred upon her, not by the lustre of gold, the sparkling of
emeralds and diamonds, nor splendor of the purple tincture, but by the
real embellishments of gravity, discretion, humility, and modesty.

27. They who offer to Juno as the Goddess of Wedlock never consecrate
the gall with the other parts of the sacrifice, but having drawn
it forth, they cast it behind the altar. Which constitution of the
lawgiver fairly implies that all manner of passionate anger and
bitterness of reproach should be exterminated from the thresholds of
nuptial cohabitation. Not but that a certain kind of austerity becomes
the mistress of a family; which however should be like that of wine,
profitable and delightful, not like aloes, biting and medicinally
ungrateful to the palate.

28. Plato observing the morose and sour humor of Xenocrates, otherwise
a person of great virtue and worth, admonished him to sacrifice to
the Graces. In like manner, I am of opinion that it behooves a woman
of moderation to crave the assistance of the Graces in her behavior
towards her husband, thereby (according to the saying of Metrodorus) to
render their society mutually harmonious to each other, and to preserve
her from being waspishly proud, out of a conceit of her fidelity and
virtue. For it becomes not a frugal woman to be neglectful of decent
neatness, nor one who has great respect to her husband to refrain
complacency in her conversation; seeing that, as the over-rigid humor
of a wife renders her honesty irksome, so sluttery begets a hatred of
her sparing and pinching housewifery.

29. She who is afraid to laugh or to appear merry and gay before her
husband, for fear of waking his jealousy, may be said to resemble one
that forbears to anoint herself at all, lest she should be thought
to use unnecessary or harlotry perfumes, or that neglects to wash
her face, to avoid the suspicion of painting. Thus we find that
poets and orators, who desire to shun the tiring tediousness of a
low, vulgar, and drowsy style, ingeniously labor to detain and move
both their readers and their auditors by the quaintness of their
invention, grandeur of the subject, and lively representation of the
humors and conditions which they bring upon the stage. From whence a
discreet mistress of a family may likewise learn to avoid all manner of
over-nice curiosity and squeamish affectation, all excess of jollity
savoring of the courtesan, and every thing tending to profuse pomp; but
she will rather employ all her wit and art in exhibiting to her husband
all the graces of life and character, accustoming him to honesty and
decency joined with pleasure and delight. Nevertheless, if there be any
woman so severe and reserved by nature that no means can be found to
make her blithe and sportive, it behooves her husband to give way to
her temper; and, as Phocion answered Antipater, who commanded him to
do an ill thing that misbecame his quality, I cannot be thy friend and
flatter thee at one and the same time, in like manner ought a man to
rest satisfied with the virtues of a chaste wife, though her serious
disposition will not permit her to act the airy part of a mistress.

30. The Egyptian women were anciently never wont to wear shoes, to the
end they might accustom themselves to stay at home. But altogether
different is the humor of our women; for they, unless allowed their
jewels, their bracelets, and necklaces, their gaudy vestments, gowns,
and petticoats, all bespangled with gold, and their embroidered
buskins, will never stir abroad.

31. Theano, as she was dressing herself one morning in her chamber, by
chance discovered some part of her naked arm. Upon which, one of the
company crying out, Oh, what a lovely arm is there!—’Tis very true,
said she, but yet not common. Thus ought a chaste and virtuous woman
not only to keep her naked arms from open view, but to lock up her
very words and set a guard upon her lips, especially in the company of
strangers, since there is nothing which sooner discovers the qualities
and conditions of a woman than her discourse.

32. Phidias made the statue of Venus at Elis with one foot upon the
shell of a tortoise, to signify two great duties of a virtuous woman,
which are to keep at home and be silent. For she is only to speak to
her husband, or by her husband. Nor is she to take amiss the uttering
her mind in that manner, through another more proper organ.

33. Princes and kings honor themselves in giving honor to philosophers
and learned men. On the other side, great personages admired and
courted by philosophers are no way honored by their flatteries, which
are rather a prejudice and stain to the reputation of those that use
them. Thus it is with women, who in honoring and submitting to their
husbands win for themselves honor and respect, but when they strive to
get the mastery, they become a greater reproach to themselves than to
those that are so ignominiously henpecked. But then again, it behooves
a husband to control his wife, not as a master does his vassal, but as
the soul governs the body, with the gentle hand of mutual friendship
and reciprocal affection. For as the soul commands the body, without
being subject to its pleasures and inordinate desires, in like manner
should a man so exercise his authority over his wife, as to soften it
with complaisance and kind requital of her loving submission.

34. Philosophers assert that, of bodies which consist of several
parts, some are composed of parts distinct and separate, as a navy
or army royal; others of contiguous parts, as a house or a ship; and
others of parts united at the first conception, equally partaking of
life and motion and growing together, as are the bodies of all living
creatures. Thus, where people wed for pure affection, that marriage
may be said to resemble those bodies whose parts are solidly fixed
together. They who marry for the sake of great portions, or else
desirous of offspring, are like to bodies whose parts are contiguous
and cleave close to one another; and they who only bed together,
if there be any such, resemble bodies whose parts are distinct and
without dependency. Now, as physicians say that liquids are the only
bodies which most easily intermix without any difference of propriety
or respect one with another; so should it be said of people joined
together in matrimony, that there is a perfect mixture of bodies and
estates, of friends and relations. Therefore the Roman law prohibits
new married people from giving and receiving mutual presents one from
another; not that they should not participate one with another, but to
show that they were not to enjoy any thing but what they possess in
common.

35. In Leptis, a city of Libya, it was an ancient custom for the bride,
the next day after the nuptial solemnity, to send home to the mother of
the bridegroom to borrow a boiler, which she not only refused to lend,
but sent back word that she had none to spare; to the end that the
new married woman, having by that means tried the disposition of her
mother-in-law, if afterwards she found her humor peevish and perverse,
might with more patience brook her unkindness, as being no more
than what she expected. Rather it becomes the daughter to avoid all
occasions of distaste. For it is natural to some mothers to be jealous
that the wife deprives her of that filial tenderness which she expects
from her son. For which there is no better cure than for a wife so to
contrive the gaining of her husband’s love as not to lessen or withdraw
his affection from his mother.

36. It is generally observed that mothers are fondest of their sons, as
expecting from them their future assistance when they grow into years,
and that fathers are kindest to their daughters, as standing most in
need of their paternal succor. And perhaps, out of that mutual respect
which the man and his wife bear one to another, either of them would
seem to carry greater affection for that which is proper and familiar
to the other. But this pleasing controversy is easily reconciled. For
it becomes a woman to show the choicest of her respects and to be more
complaisant to the kindred of her husband than to her own; to make her
complaints to them, and conceal her discontents from her own relations.
For the trust which she reposes in them causes them to confide in her,
and her esteem of them increases their respects to her.

37. The commanders of the Grecian auxiliaries that marched in aid of
Cyrus gave these instructions to their soldiers, that, if their enemies
advanced whooping and hallowing to the combat, they should receive the
charge, observing an exact silence; but on the other side, if they
came on silently, then to rend the air with their martial shouts. Thus
prudent wives, when their husbands in the heat of their passion rant
and tear the house down, should make no returns, but quietly hold
their peace; but if they only frown out their discontents in moody
anger, then, with soft language and gently reasoning the case, they may
endeavor to appease and qualify their fury.

38. Rightly therefore are they reprehended by Euripides, who introduce
the harp and other instruments of music at their compotations. For
music ought rather to be made use of for the mitigation of wrath and
to allay the sorrows of mourning, not to heighten the voluptuousness
of those that are already drowned in jollity and delight. Believe
yourselves then to be in an error that sleep together for pleasure,
but when angry and at variance make two beds, and that never at that
time call to your assistance the Goddess Venus, who better than any
other knows how to apply a proper remedy to such distempers; as Homer
teaches us, where he brings in Juno using this expression:

Your deadly feuds will I myself appease,
And th’ amorous bed shall be the charming place
Where all your strife shall in embracing cease.[231]

39. Though it becomes a man and his wife at all times to avoid all
occasions of quarrelling one with another, yet is there no time so
unseasonable for contention as when they are between the same sheets.
As the woman in difficult labor said to those that were about to lay
her upon her bed; How, said she, can this bed cure these pains, since
it was in this very bed that my pleasures were the cause of all my
throes? And still less will those reproaches and contests which the bed
produces be reconciled at any other time or place.

40. Hermione seems to be in the right, speaking to this effect in one
of the tragedies of Euripides:

The lewd discourse of women void of shame
Ruined my honor and my virtuous name.[232]

However, these mischiefs rarely happen but where women at variance and
jealous of their husbands open not only their door but their ears to
whole swarms of twattling gossips, that widen the difference. For then
it behooves a prudent woman to shut her ears and beware of listening to
such enchanting tattlers, calling to mind the answer of Philip, when
he was exasperated by his friends against the Greeks for cursing and
reviling him, notwithstanding all the benefits they had received at
his hands: What would they have done, said he, had we used them with
unkindness and severity? The same should be the reply of a prudent
woman to those she-devils, when they bewail her condition, and cry, A
woman so loving, so chaste and modest, and yet abused by her husband!
For then should she make answer, What would he do, should I begin to
hate him and to do him wrong?

41. A certain master, whose slave had been run away from him for
several months together, after a long search at length found him
suddenly in a workhouse, and said, Where could I have desired to meet
with thee more to my wish than in such a place as this? Thus, when a
woman is grown jealous of her husband and meditates nothing but present
divorce, before she be too hasty, let her reason with herself in this
manner: In what condition would my rival choose to see me with greater
satisfaction than as I am, all in a fret and fume, enraged against my
husband, and ready to abandon both my house and marriage-bed together?

42. The Athenians yearly solemnized three sacred seed-times: the first
in Scirus, in memory of the first invention by their ancestors of
ploughing and sowing; the second at a place called Rharia; and the
third under Pelis, which they call Βουζύγιον in commemoration of the
first spanning of oxen to the plough. But more sacred than all these
is the nuptial ploughing and sowing, in order to the procreation of
children. And therefore Sophocles rightly calls Venus the fruitful
Cytherea. For which reason it highly imports both the man and the
woman, when bound together by the holy tie of wedlock, to abstain from
all unlawful and forbidden copulation, and from ploughing and sowing
where they never desire to reap any fruit of their labor, or, if the
harvest come to perfection, they conceal and are ashamed to own it.

43. The orator Gorgias, in a full assembly of the Grecians, resorting
from all parts to the Olympic games, making an oration to the people,
wherein he exhorted them to live in peace, unity, and concord among
one another, Melanthus cried out aloud: This man pretends to give us
advice, and preaches here in public nothing but love and union, who in
his own private family is not able to keep his wife and his maid from
being continually together by the ears, and yet there are only they
three in the house. For it seems that Gorgias had a kindness for his
servant, which made her mistress jealous. And therefore it behooves
that man to have his family in exquisite order who will undertake
to regulate the failing of his friends or the public miscarriages,
especially since the misbehavior of men toward their wives is far
sooner divulged among the people than the transgressions of women
against their husbands.

44. It is reported that the scent of sweet perfumes will make a cat
grow mad. Now, supposing those strong perfumes which are used by many
men should prove offensive to their wives, would it not be a great
piece of unnatural unkindness to discompose a woman with continual fits
rather than deny himself a pleasure so trivial? But when it is not
their husbands’ perfuming themselves, but their lascivious wandering
after lewd and extravagant women, that disturbs and disorders their
wives, it is a great piece of injustice, for the tickling pleasure of a
few minutes, to afflict and disquiet a virtuous woman. For since they
who are conversant with bees will often abstain from women, to prevent
the persecution of those little but implacable enemies of unclean
dalliance, much rather ought a man to be pure from the pollutions of
harlotry, when he approaches his chaste and lawful wife.

45. They whose business it is to manage elephants never put on white
frocks, nor dare they that govern wild bulls appear in red, those
creatures being scared and exasperated by those colors. And some report
that tigers, when they hear a drum beat afar off, grow mad and exercise
their savage fury upon themselves. If then there are some men that are
offended at the gay and sumptuous habit of their wives, and others that
brook as ill their gadding to plays and balls, what reason is there
that women should not refrain those vanities rather than perplex and
discontent their husbands, with whom it becomes their modesty to live
with patience and sobriety.

46. What said a woman to King Philip, that pulled and hauled her to him
by violence against her will? Let me go, said she, for when the candles
are out, all women are alike. This is aptly applied to men addicted to
adultery and lust. But a virtuous wife, when the candle is taken away,
ought then chiefly to differ from all other women. For when her body is
not to be seen, her chastity, her modesty, and her peculiar affection
to her husband ought then to shine with their brightest lustre.

47. Plato admonishes old men to carry themselves with most gravity in
the presence of young people, to the end the awe of their example may
imprint in youth the greater respect and reverence of age. For the
loose and vain behavior of men stricken in years breeds a contempt of
gray hairs, and never can expect veneration from juvenility. Which
sober admonition should instruct the husband to bear a greater respect
to his wife than to all other women in the world, seeing that the
nuptial chamber must be to her either the school of honor and chastity
or that of incontinency and wantonness. For he that allows himself
those pleasures that he forbids his wife, acts like a man that would
enjoin his wife to oppose those enemies to which he has himself already
surrendered.

48. As to what remains, in reference to superfluity of habit and decent
household furniture, remember, dear Eurydice, what Timoxenas has
written to Aristylla.

And do you, Pollianus, never believe that women will be weaned from
those toys and curiosities wherein they take a kind of pride, and which
serve for an alleviation of their domestic solitude, while you yourself
admire the same things in other women, and are taken with the gayety
of golden beakers, magnificent pictures for your houses, and rich
trappings for your mules and horses. For it were a strange moroseness
to debar a woman those ornamental vanities which naturally her sex
admire, nor will it easily be endured without regret, where she sees
the man much more indulgent to his own humor.

Since then thou art arrived at those years which are proper for the
study of such sciences as are attained by reason and demonstration,
endeavor to complete this knowledge by conversing with persons that
may be serviceable to thee in such a generous design. And as for thy
wife, like the industrious bee, gather everywhere from the fragrant
flowers of good instruction, replenish thyself with whatever may be
of advantage to her, and impart the same to her again in loving and
familiar discourse, both for thy own and her improvement.

For father thou and mother art to her;
She now is thine, and not the parent’s care.[233]

Nor is it less to thy commendation to hear what she returns:

And you, my honored husband, are my guide
And tutor in philosophy beside,
From whose instructions I at once improve
The fruits of knowledge and the sweets of love

For such studies as these fix the contemplations of women upon what is
laudable and serious, and prevent their wasting time upon impertinent
and pernicious vanity. For that lady that is studious in geometry will
never affect the dissolute motions of dancing. And she that is taken
with the sublime notions of Plato and Xenophon will look with disdain
upon the charms and enchantments of witches and sorcerers; and if any
ridiculous astrologer promises to pull the moon down from the sky,
she will laugh at the ignorance and folly of the women who believe in
him, being herself well grounded in astronomy, and having heard about
Aganice, the daughter of Hegetor, a Thessalian lord, who understanding
the reason of the eclipses of the moon, and knowing beforehand the time
of her being obscured by the shadow of the earth, made the credulous
women believe that it was she who at those times unhinged the moon and
removed her from the sky.

True it is, that never any woman brought forth a perfect child
without the assistance and society of man, but there are many whose
imaginations are so strongly wrought upon by the sight or bare relation
of monstrous spectacles, that they bring into the world several
sorts of immature and shapeless productions. Thus, unless great care
be taken by men to manure and cultivate the inclinations of their
wives with wholesome and virtuous precepts, they often breed among
themselves the false conceptions of extravagant and loose desires.
But do thou, Eurydice, make it thy business to be familiar with the
learned proverbs of wise and learned men, and always to embellish
thy discourse with their profitable sentences, to the end thou mayst
be the admiration of other women, that shall behold thee so richly
adorned without the expense or assistance of jewels or embroideries.
For pearls and diamonds are not the purchase of an ordinary purse; but
the ornaments of Theano, Cleobuline, Gorgo the wife of King Leonidas,
Timoclea the sister of Theagenes, the ancient Roman Claudia, or
Cornelia the daughter of Scipio,—already so celebrated and renowned
for their virtues,—will cost but little, yet nothing will set thee out
more glorious or illustrious to the world, or render thy life more
comfortable and happy. For if Sappho, only because she could compose
an elegant verse, had the confidence to write to a haughty and wealthy
dame in her time

Dead thou shalt lie forgotten in thy tomb,
Since not for thee Pierian roses bloom,[234]

why may it not be much more lawful for thee to boast those great
perfections that give thee a greater privilege, not only to gather the
flowers, but to reap the fruits themselves, which the Muses bestow upon
the lovers and real owners of learning and philosophy?

END OF VOL. II.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See Section 7, where the form of the dialogue shows that Plutarch
counted Anacharsis among the Seven, and left out Periander. (G.)

[2] Hesiod, Works and Days, 744.

[3] Il. IV. 261.

[4] Ἄλει, μύλα, ἄλει· καὶ γὰρ Πίττακος ἀλεῖ, μεγάλας Μιτυλάνας
βασιλεύων.

[5] Hesiod, Works and Days, 41.

[6] Il. V. 341.

[7] Μηδὲν ἄγαν, _Ne quid nimis_.

[8] Called κυψέλη in Greek, whence the child was named Cypselus. (G.)

[9] Il. XI. 542.

[10] Il. X. 249; Odyss. VIII. 351.

[11] Il. VI. 282.

[12] Odyss. IV. 230; Il. XIV. 216.

[13] Il. VI. 130.

[14] See. Il. XX. 57.

[15] From Aeschylus. The whole passage is quoted in Plato’s Republic,
end of Book II. (G.)

[16] Odyss. XI. 228.

[17] Il. XXII. 210.

[18] Il. IV. 84.

[19] From the Niobe of Aeschylus, Frag. 151.

[20] Odyss. XXIV. 11.

[21] Odyss. XI. 72.

[22] Il. XVI. 856.

[23] Eurip. Iph. Aul. 1218.

[24] Eurip. Phoeniss. 524.

[25] From Menander.

[26] Odyss. VI. 148.

[27] Il. II. 189.

[28] Il. I. 24.

[29] Il. I. 225.

[30] Il. I. 223.

[31] Il. XXIII. 24.

[32] Odyss. VIII. 329.

[33] Il. VIII. 198.

[34] Il. IV. 104.

[35] Odyss. VIII. 249 and 492.

[36] Il. XV. 82.

[37] Il. VIII. 358.

[38] Il. VI. 188; Odyss. VI. 46; Il. XXIV. 526.

[39] Theognis, vss. 177, 178.

[40] Odyss. IV. 197; Il. XXIV. 526.

[41] Il. V. 352.

[42] Odyss. XVIII. 333.

[43] Soph. Oed. Tyr. 2.

[44] Eurip. Phoeniss. 1006.

[45] Il. VII. 329.

[46] Il. III. 276.

[47] Il. I. 3 and 5.

[48] From Euripides.

[49] Hesiod, Works and Days, 86.

[50] Hesiod, Works and Days, 717.

[51] Il. XXIV. 527; VII. 69; Odyss. VIII. 81.

[52] Il. XI. 540.

[53] Hesiod, Works and Days, 289.

[54] Il. XI. 90.

[55] Il. XX. 242; Hesiod, Works and Days, 313.

[56] Hesiod, Works and Days, 287.

[57] Odyss. XIX. 360.

[58] Odyss. IV. 93.

[59] Eurip. Medea, 598; Phoeniss. 549.

[60] From the Aeolus of Euripides.

[61] Il. XVI. 97; Odyss. XI. 421; Il. IX. 452; Il. III. 365.

[62] For this and the four following quotations, see Il. I. 59, 90,
220, 349; IX. 458

[63] Odyss. VI. 254.

[64] Odyss. XVIII. 282.

[65] Odyss. XIII. 216.

[66] Hesiod, Works and Days, 744; Il. IV. 306.

[67] Eurip. Hippol. 424.

[68] For this and the five following quotations, see Il. I. 163; II.
226; I. 128; II. 281; IV. 402 and 404.

[69] Il. IV. 357. For the four following, see Il. IX. 34 and 70; IV.
431; X. 325.

[70] Il. VII. 215. For the three following, see Il. II. 220; VII. 226
and 231.

[71] See Aristophanes, Frag. 397.

[72] Il. XI. 313. For the four following, see Odyss. III. 52; Il. XXIV.
560 and 584; Odyss. XVI. 274.

[73] Il. III. 320; XVI. 233.

[74] Il. VI. 444; XVII. 671.

[75] Il. XIII. 354.

[76] Odyss. III. 20; Il. XXIII. 570; XVII. 170.

[77] Il. VI. 160; Odyss. III. 265.

[78] Il. XVI. 422; XIII. 121.

[79] See note on the same passage of Aeschylus (Sept. 591), vol. I. p.
210. (G.)

[80] Il. XXIII. 297.

[81] From the Aeolus of Euripides, Frag. 19.

[82] Eurip. Electra, 428.

[83] Eurip. Iphig. Aul. 29.

[84] From the Chrysippus of Euripides, Frag. 838.

[85] From Menander.

[86] Hesiod, Works and Days, 348.

[87] The word here used (ὀρτυγοκοπεῖν) denotes a game among the
Grecians, which Suidas describes to be the setting of quails in a round
compass or ring, and striking at the heads of them; and he that in the
ring struck down one had liberty to strike at the rest in order, but he
that missed was obliged to set up quails for others; and this they did
by turns.

[88] From the Aeolus of Euripides, Frag. 20.

[89] Il. III. 39; XVII. 142.

[90] Il. II. 173; VII. 47; XIX. 216; XI. 608.

[91] Il. I. 225; XXIII. 483 and 474-479; XIII. 824.

[92] Il. XXI. 331.

[93] Il. V. 428; XI. 543.

[94] Hesiod, Works and Days, 40 and 266.

[95] The first two quotations are from Euripides (the first from his
Cresphontes); the other two are from unknown tragic poets. (G.)

[96] Thucyd. I. 42.

[97] Hesiod, Theogony, 64.

[98] Eurip. Ion, 732.

[99] Eurip. Hippol. 218.

[100] Odyss. XXII. I.

[101] Odyss. XVI. 181.

[102] Soph. Antigone, 523.

[103] Il. XI. 643; Odyss. IV. 178.

[104] Il. VIII. 281; Odyss. I. 65; Il. VII. 109.

[105] Thucyd. III. 82.

[106] Plat. Repub. V. 474 D.

[107] Il. X. 249.

[108] Eurip. Alcestis, 1159, and elsewhere in Euripides.

[109] Il. XVI. 141.

[110] From the Myrmidons of Aeschylus, Frag. 131.

[111] Odyss. X. 329.

[112] Eurip. Phoeniss. 472.

[113] Il. XIV. 195.

[114] From the Ino of Euripides, Frag. 416.

[115] From the Erechtheus of Euripides, Frag. 364.

[116] Il. XIV. 84.

[117] Il. XI. 654.

[118] Il. XVI. 33.

[119] Il. II. 215.

[120] Λύσιος, the Releaser. See Pind. Frag. 124.

[121] Eurip. Orestes, 667.

[122] Eurip. Ion, 732.

[123] See Demosth. Ol. II. p. 24, 3.

[124] See Il. IX. 108.

[125] Odyss. I. 157.

[126] Aristophanes, Acharn. 503.

[127] Thucyd. I. 70.

[128] From Euripides, Ἄλλων ἰατρὸς, αὐτὸς ἕλκεσι βρύων.

[129] Il. XI. 313; VIII. 234.

[130] Il. IX. 461.

[131] Il. XIII. 116; V. 171.

[132] Eurip. Phoeniss. 1688; Hercules Furens, 1250.

[133] Il. V. 800.

[134] II. 464.

[135] Il. VI. 347.

[136] Il. VI. 326.

[137] Il. IX. 109.

[138] Odyss. XXII. 6.

[139] Odyss. VIII. 246, 248.

[140] Odyss. IV. 605.

[141] Aeschylus, Suppliants, 770.

[142] Soph. Oed. Tyr. 1169, 1170.

[143] From the Thamyras of Sophocles, Frag. 225.

[144] Eurip. Hippol. 75.

[145] Eurip. Aeolus, Frag. 23.

[146] Pindar, Pyth. I. 25.

[147] From the Cressae of Euripides, Frag. 470.

[148] Odyss. VIII. 173.

[149] See Il. V. 341.

[150] Odyss. V. 410.

[151] Il. XXII. 390.

[152] Eurip. Hecuba, 422.

[153] Il. IX. 408

[154] Il. VII. 99.

[155] Eurip. Hippol. 193.

[156] Il. V. 514 and 515.

[157] Herod. VII. 46.

[158] See Livy, I. 9, 12.

[159] See Varro, Ling. Lat. V. 84: Quod in Latio capite velato erant
semper, ac caput cinctum habebant _filo_, _flamines_ dicti. Festus, s.
v. Flamen Dialis: Flamen, quasi _filamen_. (G.)

[160] Il. XV. 198.

[161] For an account of the various titles of Fortune at Rome, see
Preller, Römische Mythologie, X. § 1; and Plutarch on the Fortune of
the Romans, §§ 5, 10. (G.)

[162] From Sophocles, Frag. 786.

[163] See the word πλατυχαίτας (probably corrupt) in Liddell and
Scott’s Greek Lexicon. (G.)

[164] Called παλιντοκία. See above, Question 18. (G.)

[165] Il. XV. 453.

[166] Hesiod, Works and Days, 708.

[167] Hesiod, Works and Days, 45.

[168] Odyss. IV. 74.

[169] See Il. XXIII. 259.

[170] Pindar, Olymp. IX. 58.

[171] Il. IV. 370 and 405.

[172] Soph. Trachin. 442.

[173] Il. XVI. 847.

[174] Il. I. 128; IX. 328; XVI. 70.

[175] Demosthenes on the Crown, p. 260, 1; p. 307, 9.

[176] Il. XXII. 379.

[177] Demosthenes on the Crown, p. 325, 22.

[178] Odyss. XVI. 187.

[179] Il. XXIII. 673 and 670.

[180] Odyss. XII. 192; IX. 228.

[181] From the Philoctetes of Euripides, Frag. 785 and 787.

[182] See Vol. 1. p. 91.

[183] Il. I. 260.

[184] Il. VI. 127.

[185] Odyss. XII. 209.

[186] See Demosthenes on the Crown, p. 270, 3.

[187] See Boeckh’s dissertation _Ueber die Bildung der Weltseele im
Timaeos des Platon_, now reprinted in his Kleine Schriften, III. pp.
109-180. For the passages relating to music, see Westphal’s _Harmonik
und Melopöie der Griechen_, pp. 134-136. See also the note prefixed to
Plutarch on Music, vol. I. p. 102. (G.).

[188] Timaeus, p. 35 A-B.

[189] Timaeus, p. 34 B.

[190] Timaeus, p. 36 E.

[191]

[Illustration]

*
* *
* * *
* * * *
* * * * *
* * * * * *
* * * * * * *

See note on Platonic Questions, No. V. § 2. Thirty-six is called the
triangular of eight, because a triangle thus made of thirty-six points
will have eight points on each side. (G.)

[192] That is, in the quaternary, § 11. See the diagram, p. 339. (G.)

[193] Timaeus, p. 36 A.

[194] Timaeus, p. 37 A.

[195] Timaeus, p. 52 D.

[196] Timaeus, p. 35 B.

[197] X. p. 617 B.

[198] Ἅρμενος ἦν ξείνοισιν ἀνὴρ ὅδε, καὶ φίλος ἀστοῖς.

[199] See Boeckh’s note on Pindar, Frag. 8. The quotation from Pindar
is corrupt; but the sense given above is derived from other quotations
of the same passage. (G.)

[200] This epistolary discourse was wrote against an ill-bred sort of
philosophers who neither would take the charge of education of great
persons themselves, nor would suffer others to do it. Tho’ the author
seems here only to vindicate his friend, it is in truth an apology for
himself, who bred up an emperor, and spent most part of his time (to
good purpose) in the greatest court in the world. This and several
other of his moral discourses seems to be hastily dictated, so that
there is no great choice in his words or measure in his periods, or
strict method in the whole. However, the treasure of ancient learning
and good sense which is to be found in him, as it was frequently made
use of by the most eloquent Greek Fathers, so is it sufficient to
recommend his works to all lovers of learning and good manners. (K. C.)

Much of this version is a mere paraphrase. (G.)

[201] Odyss. XVII. 487.

[202] Eurip. Hippol. 102.

[203] From the Veiled Hippolytus of Euripides, Frag. 431.

[204] From the Niobe of Aeschylus, Frag. 153.

[205] Almost the same words with those of our Saviour, It is more
blessed to give than to receive. So that a man can scarcely be a true
Epicurean without practising some of the maxims of Christianity.

[206] Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia.

[207] From the Autolycus, a lost Satyrdrama of Euripides, Frag. 284,
vs. 22. (G.)

[208] Il. VII. 44 and 58.

[209] Odyss. XI. 278.

[210] Aristophanes, Knights, 79.

[211] From Sophocles, Frag. 786.

[212] See Aeschylus, Suppliants, 937.

[213] From the Theseus of Euripides, Frag. 383.

[214] Soph. Electra, 724.

[215] Soph. Oed. Tyr. 1169 and 1170.

[216] Eurip. Orestes, 213.

[217] Eurip. Iph. Taur. 569.

[218] Hesiod, Works and Days, 361.

[219] From Sophocles, Frag. 757.

[220] Thucyd. I. 18.

[221] Odyss. XVI. 187.

[222] Odyss. VI. 187; XXIV. 402.

[223] Republic, IX. p. 571 C.

[224] From Chaeremon, Frag. 2.

[225] Soph. Oed. Tyr. 110.

[226] From the Prometheus Released of Aeschylus, Frag. 188.

[227] Odyss. VIII. 246.

[228] Hesiod, Works and Days, 86.

[229] Olynth. I. p. 16, 1.

[230] Hesiod, Works and Days, 705.

[231] II. XIV. 205 and 209.

[232] Eurip. Andromache, 930.

[233] See Il. VI. 429.

[234] Sappho, Frag. 68 (Bergk).

INDEX.

“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” a proverb among the
Greeks, iv. 229.

“Abstain from beans,” meaning of the aphorism, i. 29.

Achelous, a river in Aetolia, v. 504.

Acrotatus, apothegm of, i. 400.

Actaeon, a beautiful youth of Corinth, murdered, iv. 313-315.

Ada, queen of Caria, sends delicacies to Alexander, i. 199.

Adimantus, admiral of the Corinthian fleet at the battle of Salamis,
iv. 362;
his courage vindicated, 364.

Adrastus, anecdote of, i. 288.

Advice to a new-married couple, ii. 486-507.

Aeacus, his two sons, v. 466.

Aemilius Censorinus, v. 475.

Aemilius of Sybaris, v. 464.

Aemilius Paulus, sayings of, i. 232; iv. 202.

Aeolus, king of Etruria, v. 467.

Aeschines, quoted, Prom., i. 40;
anecdote of, 55;
Eumen., 59;
Frag., 163;
Prom., 299;
Ctesiphon, 334;
his early life, and concern in public affairs, v. 34;
incurs the hostility of Demosthenes, _ib._;
accused by Demosthenes and acquitted, 34, 35;
impeaches Ctesiphon, is fined and exiled, 35;
his school at Rhodes, _ib._;
his death, _ib._;
his orations, _ib._;
his public employments, 36.

Aeschylus, quoted, Septem, i. 210, 286, 315, 329, 493;
quoted, ii. 47;
anecdote of, 77, 160;
Frag., 48, 83, 127, 165, 374, 431, 458, 463, 474, 477;
quoted, iii. Frag., 24, 222;
quoted, iv. 20, 54, 385;
Frag., 276, 279;
quoted, v. Frag., 170;
Prom., 241, 320, 398.

Aesop, murdered by the citizens of Delphi, iv. 160;
their punishment, 161.
_See Esop._

Agamedes and Trophonius built the temple at Delphi, i. 313.

Agasicles, apothegms of, i. 385.

Agatharchides the Samian, his Persian History, v. 451.

Agatho the Samian, v. 474.

Agathocles, anecdote of, i. 46; ii. 317.

Aged Men, Shall they meddle in State Affairs?, v. 64-96.

Agesianax quoted, v. 235, 236.

Agesilaus, reply of, i. 73, 219, 220;
his sayings and great actions, 385-397;
his upright character, ii. 109, 115, 319, 455;
his punishment, iii. 46, 79;
anecdote of, v. 67;
his faults, 118; 457;
his Italian History, 468.

Agesipolis, two of the name, apothegms of, i. 397, 398.

Agis, king of Sparta, his sayings, i. 218, 221;
anecdote of, v. 95.

Agis, son of Archidamus, apothegm of, i. 398.

Agis the Argive, ii. 125.

Agis the Last, apothegm of, i. 400.

Agis the Younger, apothegms of, i. 400.

Ajax’s soul, her place in Hell, iii. 442.

Alba, king of, torn in pieces by horses, v. 455.

Albinus, a Roman general, v. 453.

Alcaeus quoted, ii. 298; iii, 264.

Alcamenes, apothegm of, i. 400.

Alcibiades, i. 143;
his sayings, 211;
his lustful conduct, 489;
the prince of flatterers, ii. 108, 471;
failure of, 460;
spoke with hesitation, v. 110, 112.

Alcippus, a Lacedaemonian, banished for his virtue; his wife slays
herself and her daughters, iv. 320-322.

Alcmaeon, saying of, i. 288;
philosophical opinions;
of the planets, iii. 140;
of hearing, 170;
of smelling, 170;
of taste, 170;
of the barrenness of mules, 182;
of embryos, 184;
of the formation of the body, 184;
of the cause of sleep, 188;
of health, sickness, and old age, 192.

Alcmaeonidae, unfairly represented by Herodotus, iv. 338, 347.

Alcman, quoted; Frag., i. 494; iii. 16; v. 279.

Aleuas the Thessalian, iii. 67.

Alexander of Macedon, and Porus, i. 45;
lament of, 140;
and Criso the runner, 152;
his sayings, 198-202;
the Fortune or Virtue of, 475-516;
anecdotes of, ii. 125, 138, 473;
his moderation, 475; iii. 29;
was he a great drinker, 219;
his purpose to attack the Romans, iv. 219; v. 140.

Alexander, tyrant of Pherae, his cruel temper softened by a play, i.
492.

Alexandridas, apothegm of, i. 401.

Alexarchus, his Italian History, v. 456.

Alexidemas, at the Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, ii. 3-41.

Alexinus the sophist, i. 76.

Alexis quoted, ii. 58.

Alpha, why placed first in the Alphabet, iii. 438.

Alpheus, a river in Arcadia, v. 501.

Amasis, king of Egypt, required to drink the ocean dry, ii. 13;
questions of, 16.

Ammonius, teacher of Plutarch, anecdote of, ii. 147.

Amphiaraus, quoted, i. 317;
his lance turned into a laurel, v. 455.

Amphidamas, poets meet at his grave in Chalcis, ii. 19.

Amphion, first invented playing on the harp and lyric poesy, i. 105.

Anarcharsis, and Eumetis, ii. 8;
his utterances at the Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, 12, 15, 20,
21, 27, 39.

Anatole, a mountain, v. 482.

Anaxagoras, saying of, i. 159;
said the sun was red-hot metal, 179;
anecdote of, 332; ii. 357; iii. 35, 37;
philosophical opinions;
Homoeomeries, 108;
of the origin of bodies, 119;
how bodies are mixed, 126;
of fortune, 131;
of the world’s inclination, 136;
of the stars, 138, 140;
of the sun, 142, 143;
of the moon, 145, 147;
of the milky way, 149;
of shooting stars, 150;
of thunder, lightning and hurricanes, 151;
of the rainbow, 153;
of earthquakes, 157;
of the sea, 158;
of the overflow of the Nile, 160;
of the voice, 172;
of generation, 178;
of the generation of animals, 186;
of reason in animals, 187;
of sleep, 190; v. 145, 255.

Anaxander, apothegm of, i. 401.

Anaxilas, apothegm of, i. 402.

Anaximander, philosophical opinions;
of principles, iii. 107;
the stars were heavenly deities, 121;
of the stars, 140;
of the essence and magnitude of the sun, 141, 142;
of eclipses of the sun, 144;
of the moon, 145;
of fire from clouds, 150;
of winds, 154;
of the earth, 155;
of the sea, 158;
of the generation of animals, 186.

Anaximenes, philosophical opinions;
air is the principle of all beings, iii. 107;
of heaven, 137;
of the stars, 139, 140;
cause of summer and winter, 141;
of the shape of the sun and summer and winter solstice, 143;
of the moon, 146;
of clouds, 151;
of the rainbow, 153;
of the earth, 155;
of earthquakes, 157; v. 313.

Ancients, suppers of the, iii. 255-259.

Andocides, one of the ten Attic orators, v. 21-23;
of a noble family, 21;
accused of impious acts, 22;
his adventures in Cyprus, 22, 23;
his exile, 23;
his orations, _ib._

Androclidas, apothegm of, i. 402.

Anecdotes of
Aeschylus, ii. 458.
Agathocles, i. 46.
Agesilaus, i. 73, 219, 220; v. 67, 118.
Agis, king of Sparta, v. 95.
Alcibiades, ii. 108, 109.
Alexander the Great, i. 45; ii. 473.
Ammonius, ii. 147.
Anaxagoras, i. 332.
Antigonus, i. 44, 47, 67, 202, 205, 334; iv. 231.
Antimachus, i. 307.
Antiochus Hierax, iii. 60.
Antipater, i. 64, 197, 205, 215.
Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 127.
Apelles the painter, i. 16, 153; ii. 122, 133.
Appius Claudius, v. 89.
Arcesilaus and Apelles, ii. 133.
Archelaus of Macedon, i. 67, 193.
Archidamus, i. 74.
Archimedes, ii. 174; v. 71.
Archytas of Tarentum, i. 18, 24.
Aristippus, i. 11, 55, 147, 459; ii. 55.
Athenian barber, iv. 238.
Attalus and Eumenes, iii. 61.
Augustus Caesar and Fulvius, iv. 235, 236.
Bocchoris, i. 63.
Brasidas, ii. 458.
Caesar, i. 293; iv. 204, 205; v. 67.
Cato, i. 295; ii. 490.
Cato and Catulus, i. 73.
Cleon, v. 100, 116.
Corinna, v. 404.
Crassus, i. 288, 290.
Croesus and Solon, ii. 122.
Demades and Phocion, ii. 298.
Demaratus and Philip, ii. 146.
Demetrius Phalereus, ii. 145; iii. 21.
Demosthenes, i. 15, 65, 334; ii. 460; v. 43-53.
Diogenes, i. 51, 67, 141, 142, 166, 283, 285, 311, 487; ii. 455,
458; iii, 21, 29.
Diogenes and Philip, ii. 147.
Diogenes and the mouse, ii. 453.
Dion, i. 64, 333.
Dionysius of Syracuse, i. 83, 152, 493; ii. 108, 140; iv. 238.
Epaminondas, v. 72, 95, 101, 120, 121, 125, 401.
Euclid, i. 55.
Eudoxus, ii. 174.
Eumenes, iii. 61; iv. 232.
Fulvius and Augustus, iv. 235, 236.
Hiero, i. 291.
Hyperides, v. 55, 56.
Isocrates, v. 31.
Leaena, iv. 229, 230.
Lucretia, i. 355.
Lycurgus, the lawgiver, i. 7.
Lycurgus, the orator, v. 39.
Lysander, i. 72; ii. 495.
Lysias, iv. 226.
Magas, i. 45.
Menander, v. 403.
Nasica, i. 285.
Nero, v. 123.
Nicias, the Athenian general, i. 177.
Nicias, the painter, ii. 173; v. 71.
Nicostratus and Archidamus, i. 74.
Olympias, ii. 494, 495.
Pericles, i. 15, 18, 66, 211, 332; ii. 309, 315; v. 67, 106.
Philip of Macedon, i. 305; ii. 146, 147, 494.
Phocion, ii. 298; v. 118.
Pindar, v. 404.
Pisistratus, iii. 41.
Plato, i. 71.
Plato and Socrates, ii. 148.
Polemon, i. 55.
Pompey, v. 70.
Postumia, i. 290.
Priest of Hercules, iii. 90.
Prometheus, i. 289.
Ptolemy Lagus, i. 45.
Pythagoras, ii. 174.
Roman Senator and his wife, iv. 233-235.
Scaurus, i. 295.
Scilurus, a Scythian king, iv. 244.
Seleucus Callinicus, iv. 237.
Seneca, i. 53.
Simonides, v. 68.
Socrates, i. 11, 13, 23, 26, 38, 53, 141, 150.
Socrates and Plato, ii. 148.
Solon, v. 89.
Solon and Croesus, ii. 122.
Sophocles, v. 68.
Stasicrates, i. 495.
Stilpo the philosopher, ii. 468.
Stratonicus, iii. 21.
Sylla, v. 72.
Terpander, i. 91, 92.
Themistocles, i. 73, 290, 296; iii. 21; v. 120.
Theramenes, i. 306.
Timotheus the musician, i. 92.
Valeria, i. 356.
Xanthippe, wife of Socrates, i. 53, 292.
Xenocrates, i. 71.
Xenophon, i. 333.
Xerxes and Ariamenes, iii. 59, 60.
Zeno, i. 72, 142, 283; ii. 455; iii. 25; iv. 225.

Anger, concerning the cure of, i. 33-59.

Animal Food, shall it be eaten? Of Eating of Flesh, v. 3-16.

Animals, generation of, iii. 186;
how many species of, 187;
appetites and pleasures of, 191;
ails and cures of, 510;
their intelligence, v. 157-217.

Anius, king of the Tuscans, v. 475.

Antalcidas, his sayings, i. 222, 402;
his reply to a railing Athenian, v. 125.

Anthes, the first author of hymns, i. 105.

Anthias, the sacred fish, v. 208.

Anthipphus, Lydian harmony first used by, i. 114.

Antichthon, the, iii. 155.

Antigonus, anecdote of, i. 25;
saying of, 44, 47, 67, 202, 205, 334, 484; iv. 231.

Antigonus the Second, his sayings, i. 205; ii. 319.

Antimachus, anecdote of, i. 308.

Antiochus and Charicles, iii. 49.

Antiochus and Seleucus, iii. 60.

Antiochus, apothegm of, i. 403.

Antiochus Hierax, anecdotes of, i. 206; iii. 60.

Antiochus Sidetes, anecdotes of, i. 207.

Antiochus the Spartan, his saying, i. 221.

Antiochus the Third, anecdotes of, i. 206.

Antipater, anecdotes of, i. 64, 197, 205, 215; ii. 135, 298; iii.
517; v. 49.

Antiperistasis of motion, v. 435.

Antiphanes, witty saying of his, ii. 456.

Antiphon, one of the ten Attic orators,
ii. 142; v. 17-21;
his birth, education, &c., 17;
wrote speeches for others, _ib._;
a man of great talent and learning, 18;
concerned in the revolution which subverted the popular government,
_ib._;
on the overthrow of the oligarchical party he was involved in
their ruin, _ib._;
number of his orations, 19;
decree of the senate against him, 20;
his condemnation and punishment, 21;
opinion concerning the moon, iii. 146;
of the sea, 158.

Antisthenes quoted, i. 77, 289, 496; v. 125.

Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 127.

Apelles, the painter, anecdotes of, i. 16, 153;
his picture of Alexander, 494;
and Megabyzus, ii. 122;
and Arcesilaus, 133.

Aphareus, adopted son of Isocrates, wrote orations and tragedies, v.
32.

Apis, the sacred bull of the Egyptians, iv. 68;
slain by Ochus, king of Persia, 74, 92.

Apollo and the dragon Python, iv. 20.

Apollo, inventor of the flute and harp, i. 113.

Apollo, temple of, iv. 478-498;
the inscription ει over its gate, 479.

Apollodorus, first invented the mixing of colors and the softening of
shadows, v. 400.

Apollonides, of shadow, v. 265;
of spots in the moon, 269.

Apollonis of Cyzicum, iii. 41.

Apollonius, consolation to, i. 299-339.

Apollonius, the Peripatetic, iii. 57.

Apothegms of Kings and Great Commanders, i. 185-250.
Agathocles, sayings of, i. 193.
Agesilaus, 219.
Agis, 218-221.
Alcibiades, 211.
Alexander the Great, 198-202.
Antalcidas, 222.
Antigonus, 202.
Antigonus the Second, 205.
Antiochus Sidetes, 207.
Antiochus the Spartan, 221.
Antiochus the Third, 206.
Antipater, 205.
Archelaus, 193.
Archidamus, 218.
Aristides, 210.
Artaxerxes Longimanus, 187.
Artaxerxes Mnemon, 188.
Ateas, 189.
Augustus Caesar, 248-250.
Brasidas, 218.
Caecilius Metellus, 239.
Caius Fabricius, 227.
Caius Marius, 239.
Caius Popilius, 240.
Cato the Elder, 233-235.
Chabrias, 213.
Charillus, 217.
Cicero, 244.
Cneus Domitius, 231.
Cneus Pompeius, 241-244.
Cotys, 189.
Cyrus the Elder, 186.
Cyrus the Younger, 188.
Darius, 186.
Demetrius, 204.
Demetrius Phalereus, 217.
Dion, 193.
Dionysius the Elder, 191.
Dionysius the Younger, 192.
Epaminondas, 222-226.
Eudaemonidas, 221.
Eumenes of Pergamus, 206.
Fabius Maximus, 227-228.
Gelo, 190.
Hegesippus, 213.
Hiero, 190.
Idathyrsus, 189.
Iphicrates, 212.
Lucullus, 241.
Lycurgus, 217.
Lysander, 219.
Lysimachus, 205.
Manius Curius, 226.
Memnon, 189.
Nicostratus, 221.
Orontes, 188.
Parysatis, 188.
Paulus Aemilius, 232.
Pelopidas, 225.
Pericles, 211.
Philip of Macedon, 194-198.
Phocion, 213, 216.
Pisistratus, 216.
Poltys, 189.
Ptolemy Lagus, 202.
Pyrrhus the Epirot, 207.
Pytheas, 213.
Scilurus, 190.
Scipio Junior, 235-239.
Scipio the Elder, 229.
Semiramis, 187.
Teres, 189.
Themistocles, 208.
Theopompus, 217.
Timotheus, 212.
Titus Quinctius, 230.
Xerxes, 187.

Appius Claudius, anecdote of, v. 89.

Apple tree, of the, iii. 333.

Arar, a river in Gaul, v. 484.

Aratus, quoted, iii. 116;
of the stars, 141;
quoted, 334, 497; iv. 98; v. 112;
quoted, 177.

Araxes, a river in Armenia, v. 506.

Arcadian prophet in Herodotus, iii. 38.

Arcadio the Archaean, saying of, i. 44.

Arcesilaus, i. 53, 148;
quoted, 258, 315;
and Battus, ii. 115;
his kindness to Apelles, 133; v. 371.

Archelaus, king of Macedon, anecdote of, i. 67, 193.

Archelaus, his opinions concerning principles, iii. 109.

Archias, ii. 379 _et seq._; iv. 314, 315.

Archidamidas, apothegms of, i. 404.

Archidamus, i. 4, 74, 218, 404; ii. 379 _et seq._

Archilochus the poet, banished from Sparta, i. 96;
quoted, 97;
his improvements in music, 122, 123, 177;
phrase of, ii. 17, 61, 84; iii. 26; v. 108, 216, 320.

Archimedes, of the sun’s diameter, v. 71;
anecdote of, ii. 173, 174.

Archytas of Tarentum, anecdotes of, i. 18, 24.

Ardalus, a minstrel at the Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, ii. 11, 12.

Aregeus, apothegm of, i. 403.

Aretades Cnidus, his Macedonian History, v. 458;
his Second Book of Islands, 467.

Aretaphila, her fortitude and virtue, i. 367.

Argive women, their repulse of the Spartan army, i. 346.

Argives, wrestling matches of, i. 121;
imposed a fine for playing with more than seven strings, 130;
combat of the, with the Lacedaemonians, v. 452.

Ariamenes yields the throne of Persia to his younger brother Xerxes,
iii. 59.

Arion and the dolphins, ii. 33-36.

Aristarchus, iii. 36;
concerning the eclipse of the sun, 144; v. 246.

Aristides, his Persian History, v. 453.

Aristides, his sayings, i. 210.

Aristides Milesius, his Italian History, v. 451, 452, 453, 458, 459,
460, 462, 463, 465, 466, 469, 473, 474, 475, 476;
Italian Commentaries, 461;
quoted, 462.

Aristippus, anecdotes of, i. 11, 55, 79, 147; ii. 295, 459.

Aristo of Chios, ii. 369.

Aristobolus, his Third Book of Italian History, v. 470.

Aristocles, Third Book of his Italian History, v. 466, 476.

Aristoclia, a beautiful maiden, iv. 312, 313.

Aristodemus, his Third Collection of Fables, v. 472.

Aristodemus, king of Messenia, i. 177.

Aristodemus the Epicurean, ii. 158, 159, 180.

Aristomenes, preceptor of Ptolemy, ii. 149.

Ariston, apothegm of, i. 403; iii. 18;
his opinion of moral virtue, 462; v. 111.

Aristonicus the musician, i. 494.

Aristonymus, a woman hater, v. 468.

Aristophanes, his comedy of “The Clouds,” i. 23;
quoted, 79, 125, 500;
quoted, ii. 78, 149, 429;
his coarseness and buffoonery, iii. 11;
compared with Menander, 11-14;
quoted, iv. 196, 273;
quoted, v. 42, 405.

Aristotinus, tyranny of, i. 357-363; v. 172.

Aristotle, quoted, i. 37; 50;
on harmony, 119; 155, 272, 326;
the teacher of Alexander, 478, ii. 302, 319;
letter of, 455;
his philosophical opinions; of nature, 105;
of principles and elements, 106;
of God, 121;
of matter, 123;
of ideas, 123;
of causes, 124;
of a vacuum, 127;
of motion, 128;
of fortune, 131;
of the world, 133, 134, 135;
of vacuum, 137;
of the world, 137;
of heaven, 137;
of the stars, 140;
of the sun, 142;
of the summer and winter solstices, 143;
of the moon, 146;
of the milky way, 148, 149;
of comets, 149;
of thunder and lightning, 151;
of earthquakes, 157;
of tides, 159;
of the motion of the soul, 164;
of the senses, 166;
of the voice, 172;
of generative seed, 177;
of the sperm, 177;
of emission of women, 177;
of conception, 178;
of generation, 179;
of the first form in the womb, 184;
of seven months’ children, 185;
of the species of animals, 187;
of sleep, 189;
of plants, 190;
quoted, 225, 226;
opinions concerning the soul, 465;
opinion concerning a plurality of worlds, iv. 33;
concerning prophetic inspiration, 54; v. 189, 253, 262, 313, 316,
355;
quoted, 439;
the Second Book of Paradoxes, 468.

Aristoxenus, of music, i. 114, 115, 125, 134.

Arsinoe, Queen, i. 319.

Artaxerxes Longimanus, his sayings, i. 187.

Artaxerxes Mnemon, his sayings, i. 188.

Aruntius and Medullina, v. 463.

Asclepiades, opinions: of the soul, iii. 161;
of respiration, 174;
of two or three children at one birth, 180;
animals in the womb, 188;
of health, sickness, and old age, 193.

Aster the archer, v. 456.

Astycratidas, apothegm of, i. 405.

Ateas, saying of, i. 189; ii. 177.

Atepomarus, king of the Gauls, v. 469.

Atheism and superstition compared, i. 168 _et seq._

Athenian citizens, their number, v. 42;
their temper and disposition, 100.

Athenians, whether they were more renowned for their warlike
achievements, or for their learning, v. 399-411.

Athenodorus, memorable action of, iii. 50.

Athens, was a democracy, v. 397;
the nurse of history, of painting, and poetry, 400, 401;
not renowned for epic or lyric verse, 404.

Atoms, doctrine of, v. 345-348.

Atreus and Thyestes, v. 470, 471.

Attalus and Eumenes, their kindness and fidelity to each other, iii.
61, 62.

Attica, invasion of, by Datis, v. 450, 451.

Augustus Caesar, his sayings, i. 248-250;
the favored son of Fortune, iv. 205; v. 67.

Augustus Caesar and Fulvius, anecdote of, iv. 235, 236.

Autobulus, v. 156 _et seq._

Autumn, dreams in, iii. 432.

Baccho, iv. 256, 264, 269.

Bacchus, ii. 12, 29.

Ballenaeus, mount, v. 492.

Banishment, or flying one’s country, iii. 15-35.

Banquet of the Seven Wise Men; Solon, Bias, Thales, Anacharsis,
Cleobulus, Pittacus, Chilo, ii. 3-41.

Barley, sow, in dust, iii. 505.

Barrenness in women, iii. 181.

Barrenness of mules, iii. 182.

Bashfulness, i. 60-77.

Basilocles, iii. 69, 70.

Baths, hot and cold, iii. 512.

Battus, ii. 115.

Bear, cunning of the, v. 185.

Bears, flesh of, iii. 509.

Beasts, flesh of sacrificial, iii. 361.

Bees, cannot abide smoke, iii. 515;
stinging of, 516.

Bellerophon, fable of, i. 351.

Berecyntus, mount, v. 490.

Berosus concerning the eclipse of the moon, iii. 146.

Bewitching, power of, iii. 327.

Bias, quoted, i. 17, 406;
at the Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, ii. 4, 14, 128.

Bion, saying of, i. 76;
his opinion concerning the punishment of children for the sins of
their fathers, iv. 171;
saying of, v. 170.

Bird or the egg, which was first, iii. 242-246.

Birds, prophetic nature of, v. 193.

Birth, two or three at one, iii. 180.

Birthdays of famous men, iii. 400.

Biton and Cleobis, their filial piety, i. 313.

Boar and the toil, iii. 512.

Bocchoris, anecdote of, i. 63.

Bodies, of, iii. 124;
division of, 126;
how mixed with one another, 126.

Body, passions of the, iii. 175;
what part is first formed, 184;
diseases of the, iv. 504-508.

Boedromion, month of, iii. 444.

Boethus, his opinion concerning comets, iii. 150.

Book of Rivers, v. 455.

Brasidas, apothegm of, i. 218; ii. 458.

Brennus, king of the Gauls, v. 460.

Britain, longevity in, iii. 193.

Brixaba, mount, v. 494.

Brotherly love, iii. 36-68.

Brute animals, ails and cures of, iii. 510;
their intelligence; which are the more crafty, water or land
animals? v. 157-217.

Brute beasts make use of reason, v. 218-233.

Bucephalus, the horse, v. 183.

Bulimy, or the greedy disease, iii. 355.

Busiris, king of Egypt, strangers murdered by, v. 474.

Caecilius Metellus, apothegm of, i. 239.

Caesar, Augustus, his sayings, i. 248-250;
anecdote of, iv. 205;
and Fulvius, 235, 236; v. 67, 132.

Caesar, C. Julius, his sayings, i. 246-248;
his magnanimity, 293;
his reliance on fortune, iv. 205.

Caesar, Tiberius, sayings of, i. 277; ii. 126; iii. 23.

Caicus, a river, v. 503.

Caius Fabricius, apothegm of, i. 227.

Caius Gracchus, i. 40; v. 99.

Caius Marius, apothegm of, i. 239.

Caius Maximus, and his two sons, v. 466.

Caius Popilius, apothegm of, i. 240.

Callicratidas, apothegms of, i. 412;
saying of, ii. 187.

Callimachus, saying of, i. 323; iii. 23, 118, 321.

Callisthenes, saying of, i. 37;
his Book of Transformations, v. 454;
Third Book of the Macedonics, 456;
Third Book of History of Thrace, v. 469.

Calpurnius Crassus, liberated from captivity, v. 465.

Calpurnius and Florentia, v. 467.

Calydon, mount, v. 505.

Camillus, anecdote of, iv. 204.

Camma, the Galatian, her revenge, i. 372.

Canus the piper, v. 71.

Caphene and Nymphaeus, i. 348.

Caphisias, ii. 379 _et seq._

Carneades, i. 160;
a striking observation of his, ii. 123.

Cassius, a Roman traitor, v. 457.

Castor and Pollux, iii. 48.

Cato and Catulus, anecdotes of, i. 73.

Cato, saying of, i. 61;
and Catulus, 73; 261;
his integrity, 295;
his sayings, ii. 42, 72, 76, 318; v. 10, 66, 67;
anecdotes of, 83, 112, 120, 123, 144, 155.

Cato the Elder, apothegms of, i. 233-235;
anecdote of, ii. 490.

Catoptrics, doctrine of the, v. 257.

Cattle, salt given to, iii. 497.

Catulus, v. 457.

Caucasus, mount, v. 483.

Caudine Forks, defeat of the Romans at the, v. 452, 453.

Causes, of, iii. 123.

Causes of sleep and death, iii. 188.

Celtic women, virtue of the, i. 347.

Cephisocrates, ii. 133.

Cephisophan, a rhetorician, i. 98.

Ceres, mistress of earthly things, v. 285, 286.

Chabrias, his sayings, i. 213.

Chaeremon quoted, Frag., ii. 475.

Chameleon, the, v. 202.

Chaplet of flowers at table, iii. 260-265.

Charicles and Antiochus, iii. 49.

Charillus, his sayings, i. 217, 432; ii. 97, 116.

Charon, the Theban, ii. 381.

Chasms in the earth closed by men leaping into them, v. 454.

Chersias at the Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, ii. 3-41.

Chian women, virtue of the, i. 344.

Children, training of, i. 3-32;
similitude to their parents, iii. 180;
similitude to strangers, 181.

Chilo, i. 280;
at the Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, ii. 3-41.

Chilon, saying of, i. 471.

Chiomara of Galatia, i. 374.

Chorus of the Aeantis, iii. 226-228.

Chorus of the Leontis, iii. 226.

Chromatic scale, in music, i. 117.

Chrysermus, his Peloponnesian History, v. 452;
Second Book of Histories, 457.

Chrysippus, ii. 87;
his opinion concerning fate, iii. 130;
of moral virtue, 462;
his doctrines refuted, 488; iv. 372 _et seq._, 428-477; v. 205;
his opinion concerning the cause of cold combated, 324;
First Book of Italian History, 468.

Cicero, apothegm of, i. 244; ii. 310; v. 96.

Cilician geese, v. 175.

Cinesias, the lyric poet, i. 180.

Cinna stoned to death, v. 469.

Cios, maids of, i. 354.

Circe, her supposed conversation with Ulysses, v. 218-219.

Cithaeron, mount, v. 479.

Cleanthes, his opinion concerning the stars, iii. 139, 140; v. 176,
420.

Cleobis and Biton, i. 313.

Cleobulus at the Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, ii. 3-41.

Cleodemus, at the Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, ii. 3-41;
first brought the cupping-glass into request, 20.

Cleodorus, the physician, ii. 16.

Cleombrotus, i. 413; iv. 3, 4, 26.

Cleomenes, v. 161.

Cleomenes, apothegms of, i. 346, 413, 416.

Cleon, anecdotes of, v. 100, 116.

Clisthenes, vindicated from the aspersions of Herodotus, iv. 343.

Clitonymus, his Italian History, v. 458;
Second Book of his Sybaritics, v. 464.

Clitophon, his First Book of Gallican History, v. 460.

Cloelia and Valeria, i. 356.

Clonas, a musical composer, i. 107, 109.

Clouds, eruption of fire out of the, iii. 150;
rain, hail, and snow, 151.

Cneus Domitius, apothegm of, i. 231.

Cneus Pompeius, apothegms of, i. 241-244.

Cocles, the Roman, v. 145.

Codrus, king of Athens, v. 462.

Coeranus and the dolphins, v. 215.

Cold, First Principle of, v. 309-330.

Color, does it exist in the dark, v. 344, 345.

Colors, of, iii. 125.

Colotes, the Epicurean, ii. 187;
book written by, v. 338;
misrepresents Democritus, 341;
his doctrines, 349;
misrepresents Plato, 355, 356;
falls at the feet of Epicurus, 360;
disparagement of Socrates, 361;
against Stilpo, 367;
assaults the Philosophers, 367;
condemns the opinion of Epicurus, 368;
Cyrenaic philosophers ridiculed, 369;
treats Arcesilaus unfairly, 371;
absurdity of Epicureanism, 373;
opinions of Epicurus, 374;
danger of his doctrines, 377, 378, 338-385.

Comets and shooting fires, iii. 149.

Comminius Super, a Laurentine, v. 472.

Common conceptions against the Stoics, iv. 372-427.

Comparison between the actions of the Greeks and Romans, v. 450-476.

Comparison betwixt Aristophanes and Menander, iii. 11-14.

Conception, how it is made, iii. 178.

Concerning Music, i. 102-135.

Concerning such whom God is slow to punish, iv. 140-188.

Concerning the fortune of the Romans, iv. 198-219.

Concerning the virtues of women, i. 340-384.

Conciseness of speech, recommended, iv. 243;
examples given, 243, 244.

Conjugal Precepts; Advice to a New-married Couple, ii. 486-507.

Consolation to Apollonius, i. 299-339.

Consolatory Letter from Plutarch to his Wife, Timoxena, on Occasion
of the Death of their Daughter, two years old, v. 386-394.

Contingent and possible defined, v. 299.

Contradictions of the Stoics, iv. 428-477.

Cora and Proserpine, v. 285.

Corinna, anecdote of, v. 404.

Corinthian Hall at Delphi, iii. 80-82.

Cornelius Scipio, consul, v. 96, 112, 114, 136.

Cotys, his sayings, i. 189.

Crabs charmed by fifes, v. 163.

Cranes, flight of, v. 175, 203.

Crantor, quoted, i. 300, 304, 324, 326;
his opinion of the soul, ii. 327, 328, 345, 349, 360.

Crassus, anecdotes of, i. 288, 290; v. 125.

Crassus Calpurnius, v. 465.

Crassus’s mullet, v. 196.

Crates, i. 141;
saying of, 495; ii. 145, 321;
opinion of the stars, iii. 140; v. 419, 423.

Cratinus the comic poet, v. 410.

Crato, iii. 198.

Creon’s daughter, i. 472.

Cretinus, the Magnesian, v. 121.

Criticism on passages in Homer, ii. 69-72, 74-84, 89, 90, 91.

Criticism on Sophocles, ii. 72.

Critolaus, his History of the Epirots, v. 455;
Fourth Book of Celestial Appearances, 457.

Crocodile, story of a, v. 196, 206, 210.

Croesus, ii. 122; iii. 85; iv. 339.

Cronium, mount, v. 501.

Ctesiphon, his Third Book of the Boeotian History, v. 458.

Ctesiphon the Pancratiast, i. 42.

Curatii and Horatii, v. 461.

Cure of anger, i. 33-59.

Curiosity, of, ii. 424-445;
mischiefs of vain, iv. 236.

Cuttle-fish, sign of a storm, iii. 505;
wariness of the, v. 200.

Cyanippus, a Syracusan, v. 462.

Cyanippus, a Thessalian, v. 463.

Cyclades islands, iii. 24.

Cycloborus, a brook near Athens, v. 110.

Cynaegirus, an Athenian commander, story of, v. 450.

Cyprus, female parasites of, called Steps, ii. 103.

Cyrus the Elder, his sayings, i. 186; ii. 319;
enlarges the Persian empire, iv. 85.

Cyrus the Younger, his sayings, i. 188.

Daemon of Socrates, Discourse concerning the, ii. 378-423.

Daemons, their nature, attributes, and actions, iv. 14 _et seq._;
some of them are malignant and cruel, 19;
they are mortal, 15, 23, 24;
vainglorious, 28;
have the care of oracles, 21, 27;
sometimes have quarrels and combats with one another, 27;
our souls are by nature endued with similar powers, 50 _et
seq._;
in the Moon, v. 289;
will of the, 304;
providence of the, 307, 308.

Damindas, apothegm of, i. 407.

Damis, apothegm of, i. 406.

Damonidas, apothegm of, i. 406.

Darius, his sayings, i. 186, 502; v. 458.

Darkness, whether visible, iii. 169.

Datis, a Persian commander, his invasion of Attica, v. 450.

Daughters who had carnal knowledge of their fathers, v. 464.

Death appertains to soul or body, iii. 189.

Death a reward for distinguished piety; illustrated by the cases of
Biton and Cleobis, of Agamedes and Trophonius, of Pindar and
Euthynous, i. 313, 314.

Death of fire is the generation of air, v. 316.

Death the brother of sleep, i. 311.

Debates at entertainments, iii. 394.

Debt, Evils of. Against running in Debt, or Taking up Money upon
Usury, v. 412-424.

Debt of nature, i. 309.

Decius of Rome, v. 462.

Decrees proposed to the Athenians, v. 58.

Deity, knowledge of a, whence derived, iii. 115.

Delay of Providence in Punishing the Wicked. De sera Numinis
Vindicta, iv. 140-188.

Delight in hearing the passions of men represented, iii. 314.

Delphi, a walk in, iii. 69;
the statues there, 70;
atmosphere of, 72;
ancient oracles of, 73;
Corinthian Hall at, 80-82;
statue of Phryne, 83.

Delphic Oracle, inscription on the, Know thyself, and Nothing too
much, i. 328.

Demades and Phocion, anecdotes of, ii. 298; v. 108, 141.

Demaratus and Philip, anecdote of, ii. 146.

Demaratus, apothegm of, i. 407, 482;
his Second Book of Arcadian History, v. 461.

Demetrius Phalereus, his saying, i. 217;
anecdotes of, ii. 145; iii. 21; v. 145.

Demetrius, his sayings, i. 204.

Demetrius of Tarsus, comes to Delphi, iv. 3.

Demochares, a nephew of Demosthenes, procures a statue to be set up
for his uncle, v. 58-60;
a decree for a statue for himself, 60, 61.

Democracy and Oligarchy, v. 395-398.

Democrates, saying of, v. 109.

Democritus, saying of, i. 22, 263, 275; ii. 440; iii. 7;
his philosophical opinions, 121, 123, 126, 127, 128, 129, 132, 133,
135, 139, 140, 142, 145, 149, 155, 156, 157, 160, 162, 163,
164, 166, 168, 169, 171, 176, 177, 179, 183, 187, 227;
his opinions misrepresented, v. 341;
his doctrine concerning atoms, 345, 346, 381.

Demodocus, i. 105.

Demonides, the cripple, ii. 51.

Demosthenes, the orator, anecdotes of, i. 15, 65;
quoted, 67, 286, 325;
anecdote of, 334, 481;
quoted, ii. 145, 300, 312, 313;
anecdote of, 460;
quoted, iv. 212;
quoted, v. 34, 35;
sketch of his life, 43-53;
his birth, education, and early years, 43;
calls his guardians to account, _ib._;
is chosen choregus, 44;
his methods to obtain excellence in speaking, _ib._;
opposes the designs of Philip, 45;
describes “action” as of supreme importance in oratory, _ib._;
his early failures as an orator, _ib._;
defends the Olynthians, 46;
is admired by Philip, though an enemy, _ib._;
his magnanimity, 47;
his conduct at Chaeronea, _ib._;
his patriotism, _ib._;
the oration for the Crown, _ib._;
accused of receiving a bribe, 48;
his exile, _ib._;
recalled, _ib._;
returns to the administration of public affairs, 49;
leaves Athens to avoid being delivered up to Antipater, _ib._;
his death, 50;
his family, _ib._;
honors paid to his memory, 51;
anecdotes of him, 49, 50-53;
his great temperance, 53;
his public services recounted in a decree, 58-60;
quoted, 69, 109, 110, 124, 138, 146, 409, 411, 447, 448.

Dercyllidas, apothegm of, i. 407.

Dercyllus, his First Book of Foundations, v. 461;
Third Book of Italian History, 474.

Destiny, or fate, iii. 130.

Deucalion [like Noah] sent forth a dove from the ark, and with like
purpose, v. 179.

Diagoras the Melian, iii. 118.

Diana Orthia, rites of, i. 98.

Dicaearchus, opinion concerning the soul, iii. 161;
of divination, 176; v. 93.

Dignity of places at table, iii. 210, 212.

Dinarchus, an Athenian orator, v. 57, 58;
becomes rich, 57;
his exile in Chalcis, 58;
restored, _ib._;
his orations, _ib._

Diocles, at the Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, ii. 3-41;
his philosophical opinions, iii. 179, 182, 185, 192.

Diogenes Laertius quoted, i. 77.

Diogenes, quoted, i. 4, 12;
anecdotes of, 51, 67, 141, 142, 166, 283, 285, 311, 487;
quoted, ii. 58, 155, 193; 455, 458, 465, 466;
story of the mouse, 453; iii. 21, 27, 29, 31;
his philosophical opinions, 132, 136, 138, 143, 148, 163, 183, 187,
189, 494; iv. 311; v. 8, 65.

Diogenes and Philip, ii. 147.

Diogenianus, iii. 71, 73, _et seq._

Diomedes, ii. 41;
liberated from captivity, v. 465.

Dion, example of, i. 64, 193, 333.

Dionysius, tyrant of Sicily, does not relish the Lacedaemonian broth,
i. 83;
his unreasonable anger, 152;
his sayings, 449, 484, 491;
his ungenerous behavior, 493;
parasites of, ii. 166; 314;
anecdote of, iv. 238.

Dionysius and Plato, ii. 108, 140.

Dionysius the Elder, his sayings, i. 191; v. 84.

Dionysius the Younger, his sayings, i. 192, 501.

Diophantus, saying of, i. 4.

Diorphus, mount, v. 507.

Discourse to an Unlearned Prince, iv. 323-330.

Diseases of the body, iv. 504-508.

Divination, of, iii. 176; iv. 59.

Dog, habit of biting of stones, iii. 516;
affection for his master, v. 180, 182, 184;
docility of the, 191.

Dolphin, sagacity of the, v. 200;
nature of the, 204;
story of a, 213;
its love of music, 214;
stories of affection of, 215, 216.

Dolphin and Arion, ii. 33-36;
and the lad of Jasus, v. 215.

Domitian is mentioned [which fixes the era of Plutarch], ii. 443.

Domitius, anecdote of, i. 288, 295; v. 125.

Dorian Mood of music, i. 109, 115.

Dorians pray for bad making of their hay, iii. 504.

Dorotheus, his First Book of Transformations, v. 466;
his Fourth Book of Italian History, v. 463.

Dositheus, his Third Book of Sicilian History, v. 463, 471, 472, 474;
Third Book of Lydian History, 469;
his Pelopidae, 471;
First Book of Italian History, 475.

Dream, a romantic, ii. 407-411.

Dreams and Omens, ii. 401, 402.

Dreams in Autumn, iii. 432.

Dreams, whence do they arise, iii. 176.

Drink either five or three, iii. 282-284.

Drink passeth through the lungs, iii. 363.

Earth, its nature and magnitude, iii. 154;
figure of the, 155;
site and position of the, 155;
inclination of the, 155;
motion of the, 156;
zones of the, 156;
exhalations from the, iv. 53;
its form and its place, v. 247;
an instrument of time, 439.

Earthquakes, of, iii. 157.

Echo, what gives the, iii. 172.

Eclipse of the moon, iii. 146.

Eclipses of the sun, iii. 144.

Ecphantus, his opinion concerning the motion of the earth, iii. 156.

Egg or the bird, which was first, iii. 242-246.

Egypt, its Religion and Philosophy; of Isis and Osiris, or of the
Ancient Religion and Philosophy of Egypt, iv. 65-139.

Egyptian skeleton at feasts, ii. 7.

Egyptians in Ethiopia, iii. 20.

Ει at Apollo’s temple at Delphi, iv. 479-498.

Eleans, the, v. 426.

Elements, mixture of the, iii. 126.

Elephant, understanding of the, v. 178;
stories of, 178;
of King Porus, 183;
most beloved by the Gods, 187;
amour of the, 188;
chirurgery of the, 192.

Elephas, mount, v. 478.

Elysian fields in the moon, v. 289.

Elysius the Terinean, vision of, i. 314.

Embryo, how nourished, iii. 183;
is an animal, _ib._

Empedocles, i. 59;
saying of, 158, 469;
quoted, ii. 49, 195; 357;
quoted, iii. 34, 81;
his philosophical opinions, 112, 114, 125-129, 131, 132, 136-138,
143, 145, 147, 154, 158, 163, 165, 168-170, 173, 178-184,
188-191;
quoted, 209, 262, 293, 333, 497, 509, 518;
quoted, iv. 21, 52, 85, 87, 108, 273;
quoted, v. 169, 239, 246, 249, 252, 255, 318, 348, 350, 351;
misunderstood by Colotes, 351;
quoted, 381, 420, 421, 439.

Emprepes, apothegm of, i. 408.

Enemies, how a man may profit by his, i. 280-298.

Entertainment, late to an, iii. 417.

Envy and Hatred, ii. 95-99.

Epaminondas, his sayings, i. 222-226, 277;
his great actions, 225;
his consistency of character, ii. 109; 182, 185, 309, 313, 319,
381, 396, 399, 414; iii. 6; v. 72, 75, 95, 101, 121, 125;
his invasion of Laconia, 401, 407, 458.

Epaminondas, son of, beheaded, v. 458.

Ephorus, his opinion concerning the overflowing of the Nile, iii. 161.

Epicharmus, quoted, i. 315, 496; ii. 141; iv. 242.

Epicureans, misrepresentations of the, v. 352-354.

Epicurus, quoted, i. 138, 139, 159;
famous sentence of, ii. 92;
his doctrine; refutation of it; pleasure is not attainable, 157-203;
reverence of his brothers, iii. 57;
his philosophical opinions, 111, 122, 124, 127, 128, 131, 134, 135,
139, 142, 143, 151, 163, 164, 165, 169, 177, 183;
opinions of, v. 350, 374;
danger of his doctrines, 377, 378;
disciples of, 383, 385.

Epigenes, opinion concerning comets, iii. 150.

Epimenides, long sleep of, v. 66; 279.

Erasistratus, his opinion of the soul, iii. 163;
of superfetation, 180;
his definition of a fever, 192.

Eratosthenes, his philosophical opinions: of time, iii. 128;
of the sun, 147; v. 456.

Erectheus, sacrifice of his daughter, v. 463.

Eryxo of Cyrene, i. 378.

Esop, fable of, ii. 11, 12, 16, 19-22, 23;
dog of, 25;
at the Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, 3-41; iii. 63, 202.

Eteocles the Theban, i. 257.

Euboea, king of, drawn in pieces by horses, v. 455.

Euboidas, apothegm of, i. 408.

Euclid, anecdote of, i. 55; ii. 173.

Euclides, his brotherly love, iii. 61.

Euctus and Eulaeus, ii. 146.

Eudaemonidas, his sayings, i. 221.

Eudamidas, apothegm of, i. 408.

Eudemus, of matter, ii. 334.

Eudorus, system of numbers, ii. 343, 345.

Eudoxus, anecdotes of, ii. 174;
his opinion of the cause of winter and summer, iii. 141;
of the overflow of the Nile, 161.

Euemerus, his opinion of God, iii. 118.

Eumenes of Pergamus, his sayings, i. 206;
anecdotes of, iii. 61, iv. 232.

Eumetis at the Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, ii. 3-41;
her riddle, 20.

Euphorion quoted, iii. 321.

Euphranor, the painter, v. 400.

Euphrates, the river, v. 502.

Eupolis, saying of, ii. 112.

Euripides, quoted, i. 3, 158, 291, 300, 301, 302, 308, 320, 329, 330,
335, 458;
Hippol., 4, 14, 471;
Protesilaus, 23;
Dictys, 26, 58;
Bellerophon, 63, 141;
Frag., 287, 472;
Pirithous, 70;
Orestes, 37, 137, 140, 165, 170, 286;
Medea, 64, 71, 255;
Iph. Aul., 152, 302;
Bacchae, 163;
Troad, 170;
Phoeniss, 257, 303, 327;
Danae, 307;
Adrastus, 288;
Stheneboea, 301;
Ino, 303, 304;
Alcestis, 310;
Suppliants, 316;
Cresphontes, 316;
Erectheus, 500;
Hypsipyle, 317, 465; ii. 54, 56, 62, 87, 92, 121, 148, 150, 251,
300, 306, 357, 363, 391, 472;
Cresphontes, 93;
Hippol., 73, 108, 173, 198, 373, 374;
Frag., 86, 181, 318, 437, 501;
Orestes, 143, 443;
Medea, 66;
Iph. Aul., 49, 85;
Phoeniss, 51, 61, 66, 130, 151;
Ion, 102, 144;
Ino, 131;
Erectheus, 132;
Electra, 85;
Aeolus, 66, 85, 88, 175;
Herc. Furens, 151;
Hecuba, 197;
Iph. Taur., 447; iii. 27, 99, 116, 194;
Frag., 3, 19, 33, 41, 42, 94, 230, 458, 475, 512;
Hippol., 483;
Orestes, 168, 437;
Phoeniss, 16, 32, 43, 49, 257;
Stheneboea, 217;
Iph. Taur., 21;
Androm., 232;
Hipsipyle, 291, iv. 17, 128, 142, 270, 308, 450, 478, 497;
Frag., 47, 220, 233, 251, 272, 273, 292, 301, 325, 392, 461, 475;
Bacchae, 223, 272, 422, 506;
Hippol., 294, 298;
Cyclops, 56;
Aeolus, 105;
Troad, 132;
Orestes, 141, 507;
Ino, 158, 231;
Alcestis, 197;
Danae, 274, 283;
Stheneboea, 288;
Androm., 401;
Herc. Furens, 459, 467; v. 126, 128, 157, 172;
Frag., 15, 79, 105, 108, 118, 345;
Aeolus, 71;
Hippol., 158;
Iph. Taur., 374;
Orestes, 77, 380;
Troad, 440;
Erectheus, 463;
Meleager, 466.

Eurotas, a river in Laconia, v. 497.

Eurycratidas, apothegm of, i. 410.

Eurydice of Hierapolis, her epigram, i. 32.

Euthrymenes, his opinion of the overflow of the Nile, iii. 160.

Euthynous and Pindar, i. 313.

Eutropion, anecdote of, i. 25.

Evenus quoted, ii. 102, 192.

Evenus, son of Mars, v. 475.

Exercises, different kinds of, iii. 248-250.

Exile, consolations of, iii. 15-35.

Eyes, images of the, iii. 169.

Fabius Maximus, his sayings, i. 227, 228;
in the Punic war, v. 453.

Fable of Minerva, i. 41.

Fable of the defeat of Neptune, iii. 444.

Fable of the Fox and Leopard, ii. 21.

Fable of the Lydian Mule, ii. 11.

Fabricianus, v. 474.

Fabricius, iv. 201.

Face appearing in the moon, v. 234-292.

Fasting creates more thirst than hunger, iii. 339.

Fate, or destiny, iii. 130;
nature of, 130; v. 293-308.

Faunus, king of Italy, strangers murdered by, v. 474.

Fever, cause of a, iii. 192.

Fig-trees, of, iii. 250, 335.

Figures, of, iii. 125.

Filial treachery in Persian and Roman history, v. 458.

Fire or water, which is more useful, v. 331-337.

Firmus and Nuceria, v. 471.

Fish called the fisherman, v. 201.

Fish, eating of, iii. 422.

Fisherman’s nets, rotting of, iii. 503.

Fishes, of; the labrax, mullet, scate, anthias, dolphin, cuttle-fish,
star-fish, torpedo, the fisherman, tunny, amiae, pionetras,
sponge, porphyrae, hegemon, whale, pinoterus, gilthead,
phycides, galeus, tortoise, v. 195, 209.

Fittest time for a man to know his wife, iii. 274-279.

Fives, we reckon by, iv. 43-47.

Five tragical histories of Love, iv. 312-322.

Flattery: How to know a Flatterer from a Friend, ii. 100-156.

Flattery fatal to whole kingdoms, ii. 118.

Flesh exposed to the moon, iii. 284-287.

Flute girls, whether they are to be admitted to a feast, iii. 387.

Folly of Seeking Many Friends, i. 464-474.

Food, digesting of, iii. 289-295.

Fortune, of, ii. 475-481; iii. 131;
is a cause by accident, v. 302;
not the same as chance, 303;
relates to men only, 303.

Fortune of the Romans, iv. 198-219.

Fox, cunning of the, v. 179.

Fresh water washes clothes better than salt, iii. 224-226.

Friends, folly of seeking many, i. 464-474.

Frogs, croaking of, v. 210.

Frost makes hunting difficult, iii. 510.

Fruit, salt not found in, iii. 498.

Fulvius and Augustus, anecdotes of, iv. 235, 236.

Fulvius Stellus, v. 468.

Fundanus, i. 34, 35.

Galaxy, or milky way, iii. 148.

Galeus, affection of, for their young, v. 209.

Ganges, the river, v. 481.

Garlands at sacred games, iii. 411.

Garrulity, or Talkativeness, iv. 220-253.

Gauran, mount, v. 508.

Gelo, his saying, i. 190.

Generation and corruption, iii. 128.

Generation of males and females, iii. 178;
of animals, 186;
of the Gods, 400.

Generative seed, iii. 177.

Geniuses and heroes, opinions concerning, iii. 122.

Germanicus, ii. 96.

Gnatho the Sicilian, iii. 3.

Gobryas, a Persian noble, ii. 104.

God always plays the Geometer, saying attributed to Plato, iii. 402.

God bade Socrates act the midwife’s part, v. 425.

God, Father and Maker of all things, v. 428.

God, what is, iii. 118.

Gods, generation of the, iii. 400.

Gorgias, i. 340;
at the Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, ii. 3-41; 44, 134; ii. 502;
v. 405.

Government. Of the Three Sorts of Government, Monarchy, Democracy,
and Oligarchy, v. 395-398.

Gracchus, Caius, example of, i. 40.

Greek music, principles of, i. 102, 103.

Greek Questions, ii. 265-293.

Groom, saying of the king’s, i. 21.

Gryllus, v. 218 _et seq._

Guests, should the entertainer seat the, iii. 203-210;
to a wedding supper, 300;
that are called shadows, iii. 381.

Gylippus, his dishonesty, i. 23.

Habits of animals, v. 173-177.

Halcyon, of the, v. 211.

Halo, of the, iii. 160.

Hannibal and Fabius, i. 228.

Hares, cunning of the, v. 185.

Harp, an invention of Apollo, i. 113.

Hart, tears of the, iii. 507.

Health, preservation of, i. 251-279.

Health, sickness, and old age, iii. 192.

Hearing, of, i. 441-463; iii. 170.

Heaven, its nature and essence, iii. 137;
division of, 137.

Hebrus, a river of Thrace, v. 480.

Hedgehog, ingenuity of the, v. 186.

Hedgehog of the sea, v. 203.

Hegemon, of the fish, v. 206.

Hegesippus, sayings of, &c., i. 213.

Hegesistratus, an Ephesian, v. 476.

Helicon the mathematician, i. 57.

Hephaestion, the friend of Alexander, i. 489, 505.

Heracleo, v. 194.

Heraclides, his compendium of music, i. 105; ii. 158;
his philosophical opinions, iii. 139, 149, 156, 159, 165.

Heraclides the wrestler, iii. 220.

Heraclitus, i. 44, 79, 276, 308, 448, 453; ii. 74, 165, 330, 358,
477; iii. 26, 74;
his philosophical opinions, 111, 125, 128, 130, 131, 143, 144, 145,
146, 162;
apothegm, v. 9;
quoted, 73, 169, 425.

Hercules and Iole, v. 459.

Hercules in Antisthenes, precept of, i. 77.

Hercules, ridiculous representation of, v. 70;
and King Faunus, 474.

Hercules the woman-hater, his temple in Phocis, iii. 90;
singular anecdote, _ib._

Hermes, iv. 74.

Hermias, v. 121.

Hermogenes, ii. 194.

Herodotus, quoted, i. 80, 441;
saying of, ii. 202, 489;
Arcadian prophet, iii. 38;
quoted, iv. 248, 335 _et seq._;
malice of, iv. 331-371; v. 397.

Herondas, apothegm of, i. 410.

Herons, artifices of the, v. 176.

Herophilus, opinion of, iii. 128, 163.

Hesianax, his Third Book of African History, v. 465.

Hesiod, quoted, Works and Days, i. 22, 65, 70, 138, 156, 178, 261,
296, 307, 325;
Works and Days, ii. 24;
spare diet recommended by, 27;
and the dolphin, 36, 37;
Works and Days, 63, 64, 65, 73, 87, 92, 302, 303, 449, 452, 480,
483;
Theogony, 102;
Works and Days, iii. 64, 210, 382, 416, 436, 438;
Theogony, 118, 324, 458; iv. 15;
Works and Days, 48, 49, 68, 87, 154, 173, 264, 385, 442, 457;
Theogony, 53;
Works and Days, v. 153, 168, 172, 279.

Hicetes, his opinion of the earth, iii. 154.

Hiero, his sayings, i. 190;
anecdote of, 291.

Hiero the Spartan, statue of, iii. 76.

Hiero the Tyrant, statue of, iii. 75.

Hieronymus, saying of, i. 38, 50, 462.

Himerius, an Athenian parasite, ii. 126.

Hippasus, opinions of, iii. 111.

Hippocrates, saying of, i. 40;
quoted, 261, 292; ii. 165, 185;
his magnanimity, ii. 466.

Hippocratidas, apothegm of, i. 412.

Hippodamus, apothegm of, i. 411.

Hippolytus, son of Theseus, v. 471, 472.

Hippomachus, ii. 294.

Hipponax, i. 108.

History of music, i. 104 _et seq._

History of wind instruments, i. 108.

Homer, passages in, criticised, ii. 69-72, 74-84, 89, 90.

Homer quoted: Iliad, i. 34, 38, 39, 51, 52, 55, 62, 104, 132, 133,
134, 138, 141, 151, 153, 154, 156, 161, 165, 178, 180, 181,
200, 236, 251, 292, 303, 305, 306, 310, 324, 325, 329, 330,
331, 385, 466, 469, 475, 486, 490, 507, 508, 510, 511; ii. 25,
32, 41, 44, 47, 48, 49, 52, 53, 55, 56, 59, 62, 63, 65, 67, 68,
74, 75, 77, 79, 81, 82, 84, 88, 89, 90, 91, 108, 114, 115, 120,
123, 131, 140, 142, 145, 150, 151, 152, 154, 185, 197, 198, 200,
237, 295, 305, 310, 311, 314, 317, 319, 413, 501, 505; iii. 25,
26, 47, 53, 54, 107, 120, 152, 206, 207, 221, 231, 248, 255, 285,
301, 313, 317, 321, 323, 325, 336, 354, 364, 381, 394, 401, 413,
418, 437, 442, 447, 448, 449, 450, 480, 486, 492, 493, 515; iv.
16, 65, 108, 111, 152, 191, 194, 195, 216, 237, 238, 280, 285,
291, 327, 329, 383, 386, 401, 405, 434, 462, 483, 490, 499,
504; v. 78, 79, 85, 88, 90, 92, 96, 104, 119, 122, 123, 134,
135, 138, 146, 147, 171, 182, 200, 208, 214, 266, 276, 281,
315, 339, 350, 371, 386, 394, 400, 418, 443, 444, 447;
Odyss. i. 52, 134, 138, 154, 236, 252, 305, 310, 318, 325, 452,
469; ii. 41, 43, 47, 48, 52, 53, 54, 56, 59, 63, 65, 67, 70,
71, 82, 83, 108, 110, 114, 115, 127, 149, 158, 159, 162, 184,
195, 304, 316, 317, 320, 371, 427, 463, 467, 478; iii. 10, 42,
45, 72, 81, 101, 196, 201, 207, 226, 232, 233, 249, 259, 280,
333, 359, 365, 395, 419, 425, 437, 438, 451, 466, 477, 499; iv.
5, 30, 86, 97, 191, 200, 219, 224, 226, 230, 231, 289, 307,
325, 401, 405; v. 3, 11, 105, 106, 143, 171, 184, 281, 285,
290, 315, 323, 403, 416, 422, 423, 446.

Horatii and Curatii, v. 460, 461.

Horatius Cocles, v. 456.

Horsehair for fishing lines, iii. 505.

Horses, called λυχοσπάδες, iii. 253.

Horus, son of Osiris, iv. 80, 114 _et seq._

Hounds that hunt hares, v. 184.

How a man may praise himself without being envied, ii. 306.

How a man may receive advantage and profit from his enemies, i.
280-298.

How animals are begotten, iii. 186.

How a young man ought to hear poems, ii. 42.

How plants grow, and whether they are animals, iii. 190.

How to know a flatterer, ii. 100-156.

Hunger, cause of, iii. 341;
allayed by drinking, 345.

Hurricanes, of, iii. 150.

Hyagnis, first that sung to the pipe, i. 107.

Hydaspes, a river in India, v. 477.

Hyperides, the Athenian orator, ii. 140; v. 53-57;
his part in public affairs, 53;
his friendship for Demosthenes, 54;
this friendship broken, _ib._;
demanded by Antipater, he escapes to Aegina, _ib._;
is apprehended, tortured, and put to death, 55;
an excellent orator, _ib._;
his amorous propensities, 55, 56;
his patriotism, 56;
sent as ambassador, 56, 57.

Hypsipyle, foster-child of, i, 465.

Ibis, habits of, imitated by the Egyptians, v. 192.

Ibycus, the poet, iv. 240.

Ichneumon, of the, v. 174.

Ida, mount, v. 493.

Idathyrsus, his sayings, i. 189.

Ideas, of, iii. 123.

Images presented to our eyes in mirrors, iii. 169.

Imagination, imaginable and phantom, difference between, iii. 167.

Immortality of the soul, argument for it, iv. 169, 170.

Impotency in men, iii. 181.

Improbabilities of the Stoics, iii. 194-196.

Inachus, a river in Argolis, v. 498.

Incest, case of, v. 467.

Indus, the river, v. 508.

Infants, seven months’, iii. 184.

Inquisitiveness, or vain curiosity; of curiosity, or an over-busy
inquisitiveness into things impertinent, ii. 424-445.

Iole, the beloved of Hercules, v. 459.

Ion the tragedian, i. 322, 328; v. 186, 254.

Iphicrates, his saying, i. 80, 212; v. 105.

Iphigenia at Aulis, v. 459, 460.

Irascible faculty, v. 441.

Isaeus, an Athenian orator, v. 33;
considered by some equal to Lysias, _ib._;
the teacher of Demosthenes, _ib._;
number of his orations, _ib._

Isis and Osiris, iv. 66-139.

Ismenodora, iv. 256, 264, 269, 311.

Ismenus, a river of Boeotia, v. 478.

Isocrates, an Athenian orator, iii. 198; v. 27-33;
his parentage, birth, and education, 27;
composed orations for others, 28;
his school at Chios, _ib._;
his great success as a teacher of rhetoric, _ib._;
lived to a great age, 29;
his death and burial, 30;
number of his orations, 31;
his timidity, 27, 31;
his description of the use of rhetoric, 31;
the two suits against him, 32, 409;
his Panegyric, 410.

Isthmian games, iii. 318.

Ivy, nature of, iii. 265-268.

Jason, saying of, v. 140.

Jewish religion, statements and conjectures respecting it, iii.
307-312.

Jews, their fatal inaction in war because it was their Sabbath day,
i. 178.

Juba, his third Book of Lybian History, v. 465.

Lacedaemonians, their laws and customs, i. 82-101;
their currency, 99;
influx of gold and silver, 100;
refuse to assist Philip and Alexander in their designs against
Persia, 101;
lose all their ancient glory, 101;
combat with the Argives, v. 452.

Lachares, tyranny of, ii. 166.

Laconic answers, iv. 243.

Laconic Apothegms, of, i. 385-440.
Acrotatus, 400.
Agasicles, 385.
Agesilaus, 385-397.
Agesipolis, 397, 398.
Agis, son of Archidamus, 398.
Agis the Last, 400.
Agis the Younger, 400.
Alcamenes, the son of Teleclus, 400.
Alexandridas, 401.
Anaxander, 401.
Anaxilas, 402.
Androclidas, 402.
Antalcidas, 402.
Antiochus, 403.
Archidamidas, 403.
Archidamus, son of Agesilaus, 404.
Archidamus, son of Zeuxidamus, 404.
Aregeus, 403.
Ariston, 403.
Astycratidas, 405.
Bias, 406.
Callicratidas, 412.
Charillus, 432.
Cleombrotus, 413.
Cleomenes, son of Cleombrotus, 413, 416.
Damindas, 407.
Damis, 406.
Damonidas, 406.
Demaratus, 407.
Dercyllidas, 407.
Emprepes, 408.
Euboidas, 408.
Eudamidas, son of Archidamas, 408.
Eurycratidas, 410.
Herondas, 410.
Hippocratidas, 412.
Hippodamus, 411.
Leonidas, the son of Anaxandrias, 417.
Leo, the son of Eucratidas, 417.
Leotychides, 416.
Lycurgus the Lawgiver, 419-425.
Lysander, 425.
Namertes, 427.
Nicander, 427.
Paedaretus, 429.
Panthoidas, 427.
Pausanias, son of Cleombrotus, 428.
Pausanias, son of Plistoanax, 428.
Phoebidas, 431.
Plistoanax, 430.
Polycratidas, 431.
Polydorus, 430.
Soos, 431.
Telecrus, 431.
Thectamenes, 411.
Themisteas, 410.
Theopompus, 410.
Thorycion, 411.
Zeuxidamus, 410.

Lacydes, King of the Argives, i. 290.

Lais, murder of, iv. 302.

Lampis, a sea commander, v. 73.

Lampsace, anecdote of, i. 366.

Lamps and tables of the ancients, iii. 372.

Land, food of the, iii. 302-306.

Lasus, his innovation upon ancient music, i. 123.

Leaena, anecdote of, iv. 229, 230.

Least things in nature, iii. 125.

Leo, apothegm of, i. 417.

Leo Byzantinus, saying of, i. 288;
and his wife, v. 110.

Leonidas, apothegm of, i. 417;
vindicated from the statements of Herodotus, iv. 354; v. 157;
at Thermopylae, 453.

Leotychides, apothegm of, i. 422.

Leprosy caused by dewy trees, iii. 500.

Leptis, custom in, ii. 499.

Leucippus, his opinions of the world, iii. 135;
of the earth, 155;
of the senses, 165.

Light and darkness, of, v. 325.

Lightning, of, iii. 150.

Light, of reflected, iii. 168, 169; v. 236 _et seq._

Lilaeus, mount, v. 508, 509.

Linus, elegies of, i. 105.

Lions, of, v. 187.

Liquids, of, iii. 359.

Live concealed, whether’t were rightly said, iii. 3-10.

Lives of the ten Attic orators, v. 17-63.

Love: Five tragical histories of, iv. 312-322.

Love, of, iv. 254-311;
makes a man a poet, iii. 217-219.

Love of wealth, ii. 294-305.

Lucretia, the Roman matron, i. 355.

Lucullus, apothegm of, i. 241;
quoted, iii. 51; v. 84.

Lugdunum, mount, v. 485.

Lyaeus and choraeus, i. 54.

Lybian crows, v. 175.

Lycastus and Parasius, v. 473.

Lycian women, virtue of the, i. 351.

Lycormas, a river in Aetolia, v. 487.

Lycurgus, an Athenian orator, v. 36-42;
treasurer of the commonwealth, 36;
his great public services, 37;
his fidelity in office and great reputation, 37;
his justice and integrity, 37, 38;
useful laws procured by his influence, 38;
his diligence in the study and practice of oratory, 39;
his incorruptible honesty, 40;
his death, _ib._;
honors paid to his memory, _ib._;
his family, 40, 41;
his orations and success as an orator, 41;
his benevolence, 42;
a decree for honors to be paid to his memory, 61-63.

Lycurgus, the Spartan lawgiver, anecdote of, i. 7;
his institutions, 82 _et seq._;
their final overthrow, 101, 217, 419-425;
his sayings, ii. 22; v. 12, 92.

Lydian mood of music, i. 109, 114.

Lyric nomes, i. 106.

Lysander, i. 72;
his great victory over the Athenians, 99;
introduces gold and silver into Lacedaemon, 100;
the results, _ib._;
his sayings, 219, 425;
saying of, ii. 149;
anecdote of, 495; iii. 100; v. 92.

Lysias, the Athenian orator, his remarks on music, i. 104;
anecdote of, iv. 226; v. 24-26;
his birth, early residence in Athens, residence in Thurii, and
return to Athens, 24;
banished by the Thirty Tyrants, 25;
return after their overthrow, _ib._;
death, _ib._;
number of his orations, _ib._;
his other works, 26;
his eloquence, _ib._; v. 33.

Lysimache, the priestess, i. 73.

Lysimachus, his sayings, i. 205, 259.

Lysippus, his statue of Alexander, i. 494.

Madness of animals, v. 167.

Maeander, a river in Asia, v. 488.

Magas, anecdote of, i. 45.

Magpie, story of a, v. 189.

Maimactes, king of the gods, i. 45.

Man, perfection of a, iii. 189;
most unhappy of all creatures, iv. 504;
compounded of three parts, v. 286.

Maneros, the foster-son of Isis, iv. 79.

Manius Curius, apothegm of, i. 226.

Manlius, son of, beheaded, v. 458.

Man’s progress in virtue, ii. 446-474.

Mantinea, battle of, v. 401.

Marius, sacrifice of his daughter, v. 463.

Mars, some bad actions of his, v. 466, 467.

Marsyas, a river in Phrygia, v. 490.

Marsyas, the musician, i. 41, 108.

Massinissa, his vigorous old age, v. 83.

Mathematics, applied to Music, i. 118-121;
affords unspeakable delight, ii. 172, 174.

Matter, of, iii. 122.

Medius, the parasite, ii. 137.

Megasthenes, saying of, v. 275.

Megisto and Micca, and other women of Elis, i. 357-363.

Meilichius, king of the gods, i. 45.

Melanippides, quoted, iv. 278.

Melanthius, quoted, i. 35, 449; ii. 103; iv. 147.

Melian women, virtue of the, i. 348.

Melisponda and Nephalia, i. 59.

Melissus, his opinion of generation, iii, 128.

Memnon, his saying, i. 189.

Menalippides, i. 114, 123.

Menander, quoted, i. 70, 139, 158, 161, 164, 335, 470;
quoted, ii. 52, 57, 65, 86, 87, 124, 192, 297;
his superiority to Aristophanes, iii. 11-14;
quoted, 38, 65, 196, 488; iv. 290;
anecdote of, v. 403;
saying of, 425.

Mendesian goat, v. 225.

Menedemus, i. 77; ii. 115, 464;
his opinion of the nature of moral virtue, iii. 461.

Menelaus, the mathematician, v. 257.

Men, impotency in, iii. 181;
elements of, 188;
have better stomachs in autumn, 240;
temper of, 270-272;
when asleep are never thunderstruck, 295-300;
having carnal knowledge of brutes, 468.

Menon, his definition of virtue, i. 464.

Menyllus, his First Book of Boeotic History, v. 460;
Third Book of Italian History, 467.

Messenians, saying among the, v. 416.

Metellus, quoted, iii. 53; iv. 202; v. 459, 461.

Meteors, of, which resemble rods, iii. 153.

Metiochus, his misuse of power, v. 127.

Metius Fufetius, king of Alba, torn in pieces, v. 455.

Metrocles, i. 144.

Metrodorus, ii. 158, 160, 161, 167, 169, 175, 180, 183, 496;
his philosophical opinions, iii. 115, 127, 132, 149, 150, 151, 153,
154, 155, 157, 158; v. 378, 383, 384.

Micca and Megisto, and other women of Elis, i. 357-363.

Midas, i. 326; v. 454.

Miletus, maidens of, i. 354.

Mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind fine, iv. 143.

Miltiades, v. 407-411.

Mimnermus, quoted, iii. 475.

Mind, tranquillity of the, i. 136-167.

Minerva, admonished by a satyr, i. 41; iii. 195;
temple of, v. 461.

Mirrors, causes and reasons of, iii. 169; v. 236 _et seq._

Mithridates, i. 204; ii. 121;
story of, iii. 219.

Mixture of the elements, iii. 126.

Mnemosyne, the mother of the Muses, i. 22.

Mnesarete, statue of, iii. 83.

Mnesiphilus, at the Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, ii. 3-41.

Mnesitheus, the physician, iii. 511.

Monarchy, Democracy, and Oligarchy, v. 395-398.

Money upon usury, v. 412-424.

Monstrous births, of, iii. 179.

Moon: essence of the, iii. 145;
magnitude of the, 145;
figure of the, 145;
whence her light, 145;
eclipses of the, 146;
phases of the, 147;
distance from the sun, 147;
of the face appearing within the orb of the moon, v. 234-292;
its distance from the earth, 246;
its nature, 253-260;
its size, 261;
why called Glaucopis, 267;
is it inhabited, 274, 275.

Moot point in Homer’s Iliad, iii. 446.

Moral virtue, essay on, iii. 461-494.

Moschio, dialogue on health, i. 251, 252.

Motherland a Cretan expression, v. 85.

Motion, of, iii. 128.

Mount Athos’ shade, v. 270.

Mule and the salt, v. 184.

Mule, superannuated, v. 182.

Mules, barrenness of, iii. 182.

Mullet, of the, v. 213.

Muses, number of the, iii. 450.

Mushrooms produced by thunder, iii. 295-300.

Music, treatise concerning, i. 102-135;
pleasures from bad, iii. 376;
for entertainments, 389.

Musonius, his rule of health, i. 35.

Must, sweet, iii. 511.

Mycenae, mount, v. 501.

Namertes, apothegm of, i. 427.

Names of rivers and mountains, and of such things as are to be found
therein, and the fables connected therewith, v. 477-509.

Nasica, his saying, i. 285.

Natural affection towards one’s offspring, iv. 189-197.

Natural philosophy, iii. 105.

Natural Questions, Plutarch’s, iii. 495-518.

Nature, of, iii. 131;
what is, 105;
things that are least in, 125;
animated, v. 160.

Necessity, of, iii. 129;
nature of, 129;
defined, v. 299.

Nephalia and Melisponda, i. 59.

Neptune, ii. 38, 39, 41.

Nero, i. 53; iv. 228, 229;
anecdote of, v. 123.

New diseases and how caused, iii. 426.

New-married couple, advice to, ii. 486-507.

New wine, of, iii. 279.

Nicander, apothegm of, i. 427, 441.

Nicias Maleotes, quoted, v. 459.

Nicias, the Athenian general, superstition of, i. 177; v. 107.

Nicias, the painter, anecdote of, ii. 173; v. 71.

Nicostratus and Archidamus, i. 74;
apothegm of, 221.

Niger, anecdote of, i. 267.

Nightingale, of the, v. 189.

Nile, the river, v. 495;
overflow of the, iii. 160;
water of the, 415.

Niloxenus, at the Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, ii. 3-41.

Niobe, i. 328.

Noises in the night and day, iii. 406.

Numa, of the reign of, iv. 208-210.

Oenopides, his discovery of the obliquity of the Zodiac, iii. 138.

Ogygia, an island west from Britain and its neighbor islands,
described, v. 281-283.

Oil, top of the, iii. 370;
on the sea, 503;
is transparent, v. 318;
does not easily freeze, 319.

Old age, health, and sickness, iii. 192.

Old men, love pure wine, iii. 221;
read best at a distance, 222-224;
easily foxed, 268-270;
in state affairs, v. 64-96.

Oligarchy, Monarchy, and Democracy, v. 395-398.

Olympias, anecdotes of, ii. 494, 495.

Olympus, a Phrygian player, i. 107, 108, 110, 112, 115, 116, 123.

Omens and dreams, ii. 401, 402.

Onesicrates, banquet of, i. 103, 133.

Onomademus, wisdom of, i. 295; v. 129.

Opinions of philosophers, iii. 104-193.

Optatus, v. 171.

Oracle in Cilicia, iv. 55.

Oracles of Delphi, iii. 73.

Oracles, why they cease to give answers, iv. 3-64.

Orestes slays his mother, v. 474.

Origin of things, opinions concerning the, iii. 107-113.

Orontes, his saying, i. 188.

Orpheus never imitated any one, i. 107.

Orphic Fragments, iv. 59, 404.

Oryx, fables of the, v. 193.

Osiris, iv. 75-135;
story about his birth, 74;
great actions of, 75;
his death, 76;
his body torn in pieces by Typhon, 80;
is identical with Serapis and Bacchus, 89;
with the bull Apis, 90;
sacred vestments of, 135.

Othryadas, iv. 338.

Otus, the bird, v. 163.

Oxen, teaching of, v. 193.

Paeans, makers of, i. 110.

Paedaretus, apothegm of, i. 429.

Painter, neat saying of a, ii. 378.

Painting is silent poetry, v. 402.

Palladium in Ilium and in Rome, v. 461.

Palm tree, of the, iii. 514.

Panaetius, sayings of, i. 57.

Pancrates, i. 117.

Pandora’s box, i. 306.

Pangaeus, mount, v. 480.

Panthoidas, apothegm of, i. 427.

Papirius Tolucer, v. 468.

Parallels, or a comparison between the actions of Greeks and Romans,
v. 450-476.

Parmenides, v. 357;
his philosophical opinions: of generation and corruption, iii. 128;
of necessity, 129;
of the world, 135;
of the moon, 145;
of the galaxy, 149;
of the earth, 155;
of earthquakes, 157;
of the soul, 163;
defended from the misrepresentations of the Epicureans, v. 352-354;
quoted, 357, 359, 381.

Partridge, cunning of the, v. 185.

Parysatis, her saying, i. 188.

Passions of the body, iii. 175.

Passions of the soul, or diseases of the body: which are worse, iv.
504, 508.

Paulus Aemilius, apothegm of, i. 232.

Pausanias, the Spartan traitor, v. 457.

Pausanius, i. 305;
apothegm of, 428.

Pauson the painter, iii. 73.

Pederasty, or the love of boys, iv. 259;
defended, 259, 260;
instances of its power, 284-286;
severely condemned, 304;
the connection is uncertain and short-lived, 307;
it ceases on the sprouting of the beard, 307.

Pelopidas, his saying, i. 225.

Pelops and his two sons, v. 470, 471.

Pemptides, iv. 272, 275, 279.

Pergamus, woman of, i. 374.

Periander, at the Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, ii. 3-41;
tyrant of Corinth sends three hundred boys to be castrated, iv. 341;
the crime prevented, 342.

Pericles, anecdotes of, i. 15, 18, 66, 211, 332; ii. 309, 315; v. 67,
102;
his absolute sway over the Athenians, 106;
his soliloquy when about to address the people, 130, 131, 410, 413.

Periclitus, a Lesbian harper, i. 108.

Persaeus, anecdote of, i. 70.

Perseus, king of Macedonia, his sorrow on losing his kingdom, i. 160.

Persian Magi, killers of mice, ii. 96.

Persian women, virtue of the, i. 347.

Persians had a monarchy, v. 397.

Pestilence, relief from, a virgin sacrificed for, v. 472.

Petron, doctrine of, iv. 30.

Phaedimus, v. 171, 194.

Phaeton, i. 141.

Phalaris, brazen cow of, v. 474.

Pharnaces, of the moon, v. 265.

Phasis, a river of Thrace, v. 482.

Phayllus, iv. 282.

Phemius, the poet, i. 105.

Pherecrates, fragment of, i. 124.

Phidias, statue of Venus, ii. 498; iv. 133.

Philammon, verses in honor of Latona, Diana, and Apollo, i. 105.

Philemon and Magas, i. 45.

Philinus, iii. 69, 70.

Philip of Macedonia, examples from, i. 44, 45;
sayings of, 194-198, 305;
anecdotes of, ii. 141, 146, 147, 494; iii. 22; v. 115.

Philippides the comedian, ii. 430.

Philippus, his demonstration of the figure of the moon, ii. 173.

Philolaus, his philosophical opinions: of the nutriment of the world,
iii. 134;
of the essence of the sun, 142;
of the position of the earth, 155;
of the motion of the earth, 156.

Philosophers ought chiefly to converse with great men, ii. 368-377.

Philosophers, their various opinions. Of those sentiments concerning
nature with which philosophers were delighted, iii. 104-193.

Philosophical discourses at merry meetings, iii. 198-203.

Philosophy, threefold division of, iii. 104.

Philotas and Antigona, i. 504.

Philotas, son of Parmenio, i. 504.

Philotimus, the physician, i. 452; ii. 153.

Philoxenus, i. 125;
sayings of, ii. 42; iii. 3; iv. 289; v. 423.

Phocian women, virtue of the, i. 343, 355.

Phocion, his saying on the death of Alexander, i. 49;
his sayings, 70;
wife of, 102, 216; ii. 135, 298, 311, 321, 328; v. 83, 109, 118;
his magnanimity, 122;
his reply to Demades, 125, 142, 149.

Phocus, a story of love respecting him, iv. 319.

Phocylides the poet, quoted, i. 9, 462.

Phoebidas, apothegm of, i. 431.

Phoenix, tutor to Achilles, i. 9; ii. 150.

Phrygian mood of music, i. 109.

Phryne, the statue of, iii. 83.

Phrynis, the musician, ii. 470.

Pieria and other women of Myus, i. 363, 364.

Pierus, the first that wrote in praise of the Muses, i. 105.

Pindar and Euthynous, i. 314.

Pindar, his sayings, i. 77, 114;
quoted, 143, 173, 174, 286, 293, 303, 304, 310, 313, 328;
his description of the state of the blessed, 336;
quoted, ii. 57, 143, 177, 193, 306;
quoted, iii. 9, 23, 74, 93, 95, 96, 194, 207, 218, 377, 455, 458,
491, 516;
quoted, iv. 10, 15, 96, 138, 145, 150, 163, 260, 289, 405;
quoted, v. 64, 111, 117, 148, 194, 197, 202, 214, 316, 331, 404;
anecdote of, 404, 440.

Pine, sacred to Neptune and Bacchus, iii. 318.

Pine trees, of, iii. 250.

Pinoteras, the fish, v. 205.

Pisias, of love, iv. 270 _et seq._

Pisistratus, i. 216;
anecdote of, iii. 41, 200.

Pittacus, sayings of, i. 31, 151;
his reply to Myrsilus, ii. 5;
at the Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, 3-41; iii. 50; iv. 231; v.
145.

Pitwater, of, iii. 514.

Place at table called Consular, iii. 210-212.

Place, of, iii. 127.

Plague in Falerie and in Lacedaemon, v. 472.

Plain of truth, iv. 29.

Planetiades, iv. 9, 11.

Plants, grow how, iii. 190;
nourishment and growth of, 191.

Plato, quoted, i. 9, 19, 24, 26;
saying of, 27;
quoted, 41, 57, 71, 74, 79;
on harmony, 115, 118;
quoted, 141, 173, 256, 264, 279, 287;
laws, 292;
quoted, 297, 311, 314, 321, 337, 339, 456;
quoted, ii. 49, 92, 100, 104, 106;
at the court of Dionysius, 108, 109, 141, 146;
and Socrates, 148, 150, 168, 174, 326;
concerning the soul, 328 _et seq._, 334;
quoted, 344, 352, 353, 355, 356, 359, 364, 455, 456, 457, 492, 496,
504;
quoted, iii. 19, 81;
his philosophical opinions: of the universe, 112, 114, 115;
of the understanding, 116;
what is God, 119;
of God, 121;
of matter and ideas, 123;
of causes and of bodies, 124;
of colors, 125;
of bodies, 126;
of place and time, 127, 128;
of motion, 128;
of necessity, 129;
of fate, 130;
of fortune, 131;
of the world, 134, 135, 137;
of the stars, 137-141;
of the sun, 142, 143;
of the moon, 145, 146;
of the rainbow, 152;
of earthquakes, 158;
of the sea, 159;
of the soul, 161-165;
of sight, 168;
of hearing, 170;
of the voice, 171;
of the echo, 172;
of divination, 176;
of generative seed, 177;
of the embryo, 183;
of reason in animals, 187;
of sleep, 189;
that plants are animals, 190;
quoted, 200, 201, 213, 221, 223, 243, 365, 368-370, 401, 462, 464,
499; iv. 18, 28, 30, 41, 45;
his opinion about daemons, 86, 87, 109, 115-117, 119, 146, 254,
261, 292, 305;
quoted, v. 10, 82, 103, 116, 120, 172, 257, 276, 288, 293, 295,
297, 302, 305, 306, 338, 355, 364, 377, 381, 412, 425-433, 435,
440, 441, 444.

Pleasure not attainable according to Epicurus, ii. 157-203.

Pleasures from bad music, iii. 376.

Plistoanax, apothegm of, i. 430.

Plurality of worlds, iv. 29-39.

Plutarch, his rules for the preservation of health, i. 251-279;
his Symposiacs, iii. 197-460;
his natural questions, 495-518;
on the immortality of the soul, iii. 164, iv. 169; v. 393;
consolatory letter to his wife, 386-394;
his Platonic questions, 425-449;
his spurious remains, 450-509.

Poet, love makes a man a, iii. 217-219.

Poetry, essay on. How a young man ought to hear poems, ii. 42-94.

Polemon, his kind reply, i. 55.

Policy or government defined, v. 396.

Political precepts, v. 97-156.

Poltys, saying of, i. 189.

Polus the tragedian, v. 69.

Polybus, of seven-months’ infants, iii. 185.

Polycephalus, the nome, i. 108.

Polycratidas, apothegm of, i. 431.

Polycrita, a woman of Naxos, i. 364, 366.

Polydorus, apothegm of, i. 430.

Polyhistor, his Third Book of Italian History, v. 476.

Polymnestus, his improvements in music, i. 107, 110, 112, 123.

Polypus, why it changes color, iii. 506;
many-colored, v. 202.

Polysperchon’s treachery, i. 64, 71.

Pompey, his great actions and sayings, i. 241 _et seq._, 290;
statues of, 293, v. 70, 102, 112, 114;
owed his success to Sylla, 115.

Porsena of Clusium, war with the Romans, v. 451, 456.

Porus, an Indian king, i. 202.

Posidonius, his opinion of fate, iii. 130;
of a vacuum, 137;
of eclipses, v. 262.

Possible and contingent defined, v. 299.

Postumia, chastity of, i. 290.

Power, necessity, &c., defined, v. 300.

Praise, inordinate, a sign of a flatterer, ii, 116, 117, 120;
young people are often spoiled by it, 123.

Preservation of health, rules for, i. 251-279.

Priam and Polydore, v. 465.

Price of peace, women given as the, v. 468.

Priest of Hercules, iii. 90.

Principle and element, difference between, iii. 106.

Principle of cold, v. 309-330.

Principles, what they are, iii. 106.

Prize for poets at the games, iii. 316.

Procles, tyrant of Epidaurus, puts Timarchus to death, iii. 89;
his own unhappy end, _ib._

Procreation of the soul as discussed in the Timaeus of Plato, ii.
326-367.

Progress in virtue, how it may be ascertained, ii. 446-474.

Prometheus, anecdote of, i. 289.

Proserpine, the same as Isis, iv. 88;
and Cora, v. 285, 286.

Prosodia, songs called, i. 106.

Protagoras quoted, i. 332.

Protogenes, iv. 257, 258, 260-265.

Providence, of God, iv. 140-188; v. 305;
of the inferior gods, 306;
of the daemons, 307, 308.

Ptolemaeus Philadelphus, i. 25.

Ptolemaeus Soter, iv. 88.

Ptolemy Lagus, anecdote of, i. 45;
his saying, 202; ii. 177.

Publius Decius, his dream, v. 462.

Publius Nigidius, v. 96.

Punishment of the wicked, why so long delayed, iv. 140-188.

Pupius Piso, the rhetorician, iv. 245.

Purple shell fish, v. 205.

Pylades and Orestes, their friendship, i. 465.

Pyraechmes’s horses, v. 455.

Pyrander, his Fourth Book of Peloponnesian Histories, v. 474.

Pyrandrus, the commissary, v. 469.

Pyrrhon, the Stoic philosopher, anecdote of, ii. 467.

Pyrrhus the Epirot, his saying, i. 207.

Pythagoras, his aphorisms, i. 28, 29;
of music, 130;
quoted, 175;
aphorism, 179, 294;
symbols of, 454, 471;
his unseasonable reproof, ii. 148;
his joy on discovering the relation to each other of the three
sides of a right-angled triangle, 174;
his philosophical opinions: of the principles of things, iii. 109;
of the unity of God, 121;
of geniuses and heroes, 122;
of matter, 123;
of causes, 124;
of bodies, 126;
of time, 127;
of motion, 128;
of generation and corruption, 129;
of the world, 132-137;
of the zodiac, 138;
of the summer and winter solstice, 143;
of the moon, 145;
of the zones, 156;
of the soul, 161-164;
of the voice, 172;
of divination, 176;
of generative seed, 177;
of reason in animals, 187;
precepts of, derived his philosophy from Egyptian priests, iv. 72.

Pythagorean philosophy of dreams, daemons, ii. 412, 413.

Pythagoreans, precept of, iii. 22;
why they do not eat fish, 422-426.

Pytheas, his saying, i. 213; iii. 159;
apothegm of, v. 107, 110.

Pythes, the Lydian, i. 382.

Pythian games, iii. 316.

Pythian priestess, iv. 8, 9, 62, 63;
why she now ceases to deliver her oracles in verse, iii. 69-103.

Pythocles, his Third Book of Italian History, v. 460;
Third Book of the Georgics, 476.

Pythoclides the flute player, i. 114.

Python of Aenos, ii. 314.

Quarry of Carystus, iv. 54.

Questions or Causes, Second Book of, v. 475.

Raillery, of, iii. 229-240.

Rainbow, of the, iii. 151.

Rain, snow, and hail, of, iii. 151.

Rational faculty, of the, v. 441.

Reason, beasts make use of, v. 218-233.

Reason, habit of our, iii. 166.

Remarkable speeches of some obscure
men amongst the Spartans, i. 432-440.

Remora or Echeneis, iii. 252.

Reproof, how to be administered, ii. 138-156.

Respiration or breathing, iii, 173.

Rhesus and Similius, v. 466.

Rhodope and Haemus, mountains, v. 491.

Riddles and their solutions, ii. 19, 20.

Roman questions, ii. 204-264.

Roman senator and his wife, iv. 233-235.

Romans, fortune of the, iv. 198-219.

Rome, saved by the cackling of geese, iv. 217;
favored by fortune, 219.

Romulus, his birth and education, iv. 206-208;
murdered in the senate, v. 470;
and Remus, suckled by a she-wolf, 473.

Rules for the preservation of health, i. 251-279.

Rutilius the usurer, v. 419.

Sabinus of Galatia, iv. 308.

Sacadas, a flute player, i. 109, 110, 112.

Sacred games, garlands of, iii. 411.

Sacrificed beasts, iii. 361.

Sagaris, a river in Phrygia, v. 492.

Salmantica, women of, i. 352.

Salt and cummin, why does Homer call it divine, iii. 336.

Salt given to cattle, iii. 497;
not found in fruit, 498.

Sappho, i. 42, 114; ii. 506;
quoted, iii. 95, 263;
quoted, iv. 260.

Sappho’s measures, grace in, iii. 74.

Sardanapalus, his luxury and lust, i. 497.

Sardians and Smyrnaeans, v. 468.

Saturn and his four children, v. 456, 457.

Satyrus the orator, i. 47.

Scamander, a river in Troas, v. 493.

Scaurus, his magnanimity, i. 295.

Scilurus, anecdote of, iv. 244.

Scipio the Elder, apothegm of, i. 229; ii. 475; iv. 201; v. 96, 112,
114, 136.

Scipio the Younger, his sayings and great actions, i. 235-239.

Scopas, saying of, ii. 303.

Scythinus, verses of, iii. 86.

Sea calves, of, v. 210.

Sea, of the, iii. 158;
ebbing and flowing of the, 159;
food of the, 302-306;
made hot by wind, 501.

Sea-sickness, iii. 502.

Sea water nourishes not trees, iii. 495;
upon wine, 502;
oil on the, 503.

Seed, nature of generative, iii. 177;
that fall on the oxen’s horns, 368;
watering of, 496;
watered by thunder showers, 498.

Seleucus the mathematician, iii. 159.

Seleucus Callinicus, anecdote of, iv. 237.

Self-praise. How a man may inoffensively praise himself without being
liable to envy, ii. 306-325.

Semiramis, her saying, i. 187, 497; iv. 85.

Seneca, anecdote of, i. 53.

Senses, of the, iii. 164;
represent what is true, 165;
number of the, 165;
actions of the, 166.

Sentiments concerning Nature with which Philosophers were delighted,
iii. 104-193.

Serapio, iii. 74, 79, 81, 82.

Serapis is Pluto, iv. 88, 89.

Serpent and the Aetolian woman, v. 188.

Seven months’ infants, of, iii. 184.

Seven Wise Men, Banquet of the, ii. 3-41.

Servius Tullius, his birth, elevation, and prosperous reign, iv. 212,
213.

Shadows, guests called, iii. 381.

Sheep bitten by wolves, iii. 254.

She-wolves, of, iii. 517.

Ships in winter, sailing of, iii. 500.

Shoe pinches, where the, ii. 494.

Sibyl with her frantic grimaces, iii. 74.

Sight, of our, iii. 168.

Silence commended, iv. 230, 243.

Simonides, quoted, i. 149, 257, 295, 305, 309, 318;
quoted, ii. 44, 101, 136, 436, 457, 471;
quoted, iii. 22, 87, 259, 409, 451, 459, 473;
quoted, iv. 158;
saying of, v. 66, 68, 71, 121.

Sipylus, mount, v. 489.

Siramnes, saying of, i. 185.

Sleep or death, causes of, iii. 188;
whether it appertains to the soul or body, 189.

Smelling, of, iii. 170.

Smyrna and Cinyras, v. 464.

Snow, preservation of, iii. 350.

Soclarus, iv. 292; v. 156, 158, 160, 166, 169, 170, 171, 216.

Socrates, anecdotes of, i. 11, 13, 23, 26, 38, 53, 141, 150, 162;
rules of health, 255;
quoted, 307, 310, 312, 337; ii. 46, 148, 150, 338, 441;
his Daemon, 378-423, 441, 495; iii. 4, 19, 35, 112, 121, 123; iv.
249; v. 93, 359, 361, 362-364, 377, 381.

Socrates, his Second Book of Thracian History, v. 462.

Soil, deep, for wheat, iii. 504;
lean soil for barley, 504.

Solon and Croesus, anecdote of, ii. 122.

Solon, quoted, i. 155, 297;
at the Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, ii. 3-41;
quoted, 297, 454, 487;
quoted,
iii. 50; iv. 72;
quoted, 260;
anecdote of, 304; v. 89, 113, 117, 118, 131.

Sophocles, quoted, i. 46, 57, 244, 288;
Thamyras, 39;
Frag., 58, 63;
Tyre, 206, 467;
Antig., 51, 462;
Oed. Tyr., 179, 470;
quoted, ii. 45, 57, 61, 72;
criticisms on, 72;
Frag., 173, 241, 244, 298, 431, 452, 456, 470, 495;
Oed. Tyr., 60, 172, 442, 476, 495;
Antig., 110;
Trachin., 311;
Electra, 440;
quoted, iii. 97, 210, 222;
Frag., 7;
Antig. 45;
Oed. Tyr., 235, 474;
Oed. Col., 232;
Electra, 437;
quoted, iv. 87, 246, 287, 304;
Oed. Tyr., 197, 202;
Trachin., 281;
Antig., 239, 283, 404;
Frag., 221, 226, 274, 284, 301;
quoted, v. 69, 76, 158, 216;
Oed. Col., 68;
Frag., 75, 84;
anecdote of, 68.

Sostratus, his Second Book of Tuscan History, v. 468.

Sotades, jest of, i. 25.

Soterichus, the musician, i. 103, 112.

Soul of Ajax, her place in hell, iii. 442.

Soul or body, death appertains to, iii. 189.

Soul, procreation of the, ii. 326-367;
its nature and essence, iii. 161, 163;
parts of the, 162;
in what part of the body it resides, 163;
motion of the, 163;
immortality of the, 164;
principal part of the, 173;
three sorts of motion in the, v. 371;
state of, after death, 393, 394;
ancienter than the body, 432.

Souls dispersed into the earth, moon, &c., v. 438.

Sounds in the night and day, iii. 406.

Sows, tame and wild, iii. 508.

Space, of, iii. 127.

Sparta had an oligarchy, v. 397.

Speech composed of nouns and verbs, v. 444.

Speech of a statesman, what it should be, v. 107.

Sperm, whether it be a body, iii. 177.

Spermatic emission of women, iii. 177.

Sphodrias, v. 118.

Spiders, labor of the, v. 174.

Sponge, of the, v. 205.

Spurious remains of Plutarch, v. 450-509.

Star-fish, subtlety of the, v. 201.

Stark drunk, those that are, iii. 281.

Stars, essence of the, iii. 138;
what figure they are, 139;
order and place of, 139;
motion and circulation of, 140;
whence do they receive their light, 140;
which are called the Dioscuri, the twins, or Castor and Pollux,
141;
how they prognosticate, 141;
number of the, whether odd or even, 446.

Stasicrates proposes to turn Mount Athos into a statue of Alexander,
i. 495.

Stesichorus, i. 109, 112; iv. 497.

Steward of a feast, iii. 212-216.

Stilpo, the philosopher, i. 13, 76, 144, 161;
anecdote of, ii. 468;
defended, v. 365-367.

Stoics speak greater improbabilities than the poets, iii. 194-196;
their opinions concerning daemons, iv. 24;
common conceptions against the, 372-427;
contradictions of the, 428-477.

Strabo, quoted, i. 27.

Strato, i. 155; iii. 163; v. 161.

Stratonica of Galatia, i. 373.

Stratonicus, anecdote of, ii. 298; iii. 21.

Strymon, a river in Thrace, v. 491.

Summer and winter, cause of, iii. 141.

Summer and winter solstice, iii. 143.

Sun, essence of the, iii. 141;
magnitude of the, 142;
figure or shape of the, 143;
turning and returning of the, 143;
eclipses of the, 144.

Superstition of the Gauls, Scythians, and Carthaginians, i. 182, 183.

Superstition, or indiscreet devotion, i. 168-184;
folly of, ii. 387.

Supper, many guests at, iii. 323.

Supper-room, why too narrow at first for guests, iii. 326.

Suppers of the ancients, iii. 255-259.

Swallows in the house, iii. 419;
intelligence of the, v. 174.

Sylla, i. 32-35;
anecdote of, v. 72, 115, 135.

Symposiacs, or table discourses, iii. 197-460.

Synorix and Camma, iv. 302.

Table, dignity of places at, iii. 210-212.

Tables and lamps of the ancients, iii. 372.

Talkativeness, or garrulity, iv. 220-253.

Talk, deliberate or tumultuous, iii. 395.

Tanais, a river in Scythia, v. 494.

Tarpeia, a virgin, the story of, v. 460.

Taste, of, iii. 170.

Taxiles of India, i. 201.

Taygetus, mount, v. 498.

Tears of the hart, iii. 507.

Tears of wild boars, iii. 507.

Telamon and Periboea, v. 467.

Telamon and Phocus, v. 466.

Telecrus, apothegm of, i. 431.

Telegonus, son of Ulysses, v. 476.

Telephanes of Megara, i. 117.

Telephus, i. 289.

Telesias the Theban, an eminent flute-player, i. 125.

Telesphorus, in an iron cage, iii. 31.

Temple of Apollo, iv. 478-498.

Teres, his saying, i. 189.

Teribazus, anecdote of, i. 176.

Terpander, the musician, fined by the Ephori, and why? i. 91, 92;
an inventor of ancient music, 102, 105, 109;
an excellent composer to the harp, 106, 112;
added the octave to the heptachord, 102, 122.

Teuthras, mount, v. 504.

Thales, at the Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, ii. 3-41;
first of philosophers; the Ionic sect took its denomination from
him, iii. 107;
his philosophical opinions; difference between a principle and an
element, 106;
that the intelligence of the world was God, 121;
of geniuses and heroes, 122;
of division of bodies, 126;
of necessity, 129;
of the division of heaven, 137;
of the eclipses of the sun, 144;
that the moon borrows her light from the sun, 146;
that the earth is globular, and the centre of the universe, 155;
of earthquakes, 157;
of the overflow of the Nile, 160;
of the soul, 161; iv. 337, 480.

Thaletas, a composer, i. 110, 112;
power of his music, 133.

Thamyras, the singer, i. 105.

Theanor, ii. 395, 396.

Thebes, liberation of, ii. 414-423.

Thectamenes, apothegm of, i. 411.

Themisteas, apothegm of, i. 410.

Themistocles, quoted, i. 73;
his saying, 208;
suspected of treason, 290, 296, 480;
quoted, ii. 97, 311, 471;
his kind reception by the Persian king, iii. 21, 30; iv. 208, 361,
365; v. 101, 116, 120, 121, 127.

Theo, iii. 70, 71, 74, 88.

Theocritus, his remark and death, i. 25, 73; ii. 380; iii. 516.

Theodorus, saying of, i. 142; ii. 321, 349; iii. 31;
his Book of Transformations, v. 464.

Theognis, i. 473; ii. 59; iii. 506.

Theon, ii. 157 _et seq._; v. 273-275.

Theophilus, his Third Book of Italian History, v. 459;
Second Book of Peloponnesian Histories, 470.

Theophrastus, sayings of, i. 276, 304, 442; ii. 303; iii. 45, 64,
218, 219, 334; v. 202, 427.

Theopompus, his sayings, i. 217, 410; v. 137.

Theotimus, his Italian History, v. 456.

Theramenes, anecdote of, i. 306.

Thermodon, a river in Scythia, v. 495.

Thero, anecdote of, iv. 286.

Theseus and his son Hippolytus, v. 471.

Thespesius, iv. 177, 182 _et seq._, 188.

Thirst, cause of, iii. 341.

Thorycion, apothegm of, i. 411.

Thrasonides quoted, ii. 297.

Thucydides, quoted, i. 70, 76, 472, 490;
quoted, ii. 98, 117, 149, 152, 458;
quoted, iii. 88;
quoted, iv. 141;
quoted, v. 65, 106, 403.

Thunder, of, iii. 150.

Thymbris, and his son Rustius, v. 466.

Tides, of, iii. 159.

Tigris, the river, v. 507.

Timaeus, his opinion of tides, iii. 159.

Timesias, the oracle and, i. 471;
anecdote of, v. 127.

Time, essence and nature of, iii. 127, 128.

Timoclea, at the taking of Thebes, i. 376.

Timoleon, ii. 314.

Timotheus, the musician, anecdote of, i. 92, 106, 112; ii. 83, 306;
v. 76.

Titus Quinctius, apothegm of, i. 230.

Tmolus, mount, v. 486.

Torpedo, or crampfish, v. 201.

Torquatus and Clusia, v. 459.

Tortoise, their care for their young, v. 209.

Training of children, i. 3-32.

Tranquillity of the mind, the, i. 136-167.

Transmutation of bodies, v. 14.

Trees and seeds, watering of, iii. 496.

Trees not nourished by sea-water, iii. 495.

Triangles, of, v. 433.

Trisimachus, his book of Foundations of Cities, v. 455.

Trochilus and crocodile, v. 206.

Troilus wept less than Priam, i. 323.

Trojan women, virtue of the, i. 342.

Trophonius and Agamedes, i. 313.

True friendship, of, i. 464-474; ii. 100-134.

True happiness, of, v. 392.

Tullus Hostilius, v. 455.

Tunnies, dim sight of the, v. 204.

Typhon, in Egyptian mythology, iv. 80, 81, 86, 88, 91, 92, 99, 101,
105, 110, 114, 118, 122.

Tyrrhene women, virtue of the, i. 349.

Ulysses, i. 160;
in the island of Circe, v. 218 _et seq._

Unity of God. Of the word εἰ engraven over the gate of the temple of
Apollo at Delphi, iv. 478-498.

Universe, whether it is one, iii. 114;
division of the, v. 429.

Unlearned Prince, Discourse to an, iv. 323-330.

Usurers, what sort of men they are, 417.

Usury, evils of, v. 412-424.

Vacuum, of a, iii. 126;
there can be none in nature, iv. 33;
suppose there were, it would have no beginning, middle, or end, 34.

Valeria and Cloelia, i. 356.

Valeria Tusculanaria, v. 464.

Valerius Conatus swallowed up alive, v. 455.

Venus’s hands wounded by Diomedes, iii. 441.

Verses seasonably and unseasonably applied, iii. 436.

Vice and virtue, ii. 482-485.

Vice, whether it is sufficient to render a man unhappy, iv. 499-503.

Vines irrigated with wine, iii. 513;
rank of leaves, iii. 513.

Virtue and vice, ii. 482-485.

Virtue may be taught, i. 78-81.

Virtue or fortune, to which of these was due the greatness and glory
of Rome? iv. 198-219.

Virtue, progress in, ii. 446-474.

Virtues of women, i. 340-384.

Vision, doctrine of, iii. 168; v. 236 _et seq._

Voice is incorporeal, iii. 172.

Voice, of the, iii. 171.

Vowels and semi-vowels, iii. 438.

Water made colder by stones and lead, iii. 348.

Water or fire, which is more useful? v. 331-337.

Water, white and black, iii. 518.

Wealth, the love of, ii. 294-305.

Well water, change of the temperature in, iii. 347.

West wind the swiftest, iii, 515.

Whale, of the, v. 207.

Wheat, sow, in clay, iii. 505.

Whether an aged man ought to meddle in state affairs, v. 64-96.

Whether the passions of the soul, or diseases of the body, are
worse, iv. 504-508.

Whether ’twere rightly said, “Live concealed,” iii. 3-10.

Whether vice is sufficient to render a man unhappy, iv. 499-503.

Whirlwinds, of, iii. 150.

Why the oracles cease to give answers, iv. 3-64.

Wicked, delay of Providence in punishing the, iv. 140-188.

Widows in India, iv. 502.

Wild beasts, steps of, iii. 509;
their tracks, 509.

Wild boars, tears of the, iii. 507.

Winds, of, iii. 154.

Wine, whether it is potentially cold, iii. 272-274;
straining of, 351;
middle of, 370;
sea water upon, 502;
irrigation with, 513.

Winter and summer, cause of, iii. 141, 154.

Winter, ships in, iii. 500;
sea least hot in, 501.

Wise Men, the Seven, Banquet of, ii. 3-41;
their names, iv. 480.

Woman, of Pergamus, i. 374.

Woman of Thessaly torn in pieces by dogs, v. 463.

Women, the virtues of, i. 340-384;
barrenness in, iii. 181;
are hardly foxed, 268-270;
temper of, 270-272;
given as the price of peace, v. 468.

Word ει at Apollo’s temple at Delphi. iv. 478-498.

World, how it was brought into its present order, iii. 113.

World, of the, iii. 132;
figure of the, 133;
whether it be an animal, 133;
whether it is eternal and incorruptible, 133;
its nutriment, 134;
from what element was it raised, 134;
in what form and order was it composed, 135;
cause of its inclination, 136;
thing which is beyond the, 136;
what parts on the right and left hand, 137.

Worlds, plurality of, iv. 29-38.

Wrestling, of, iii. 246.

Xanthippe, wife of Socrates, anecdotes of, i. 53, 292.

Xenaenetus, v. 109.

Xenocrates, anecdote of; i. 71, 442;
his opinions concerning the soul, ii. 327, 439;
of triangles, iii. 24, 139, 494;
his opinion about daemons, iv. 17, 87;
saying of, v. 10, 494.

Xenocritus, a composer, i. 110, 380.

Xenodamus, a composer, i. 110.

Xenophanes, his reply, i. 65, 183;
his philosophical opinions, iii. 134, 138, 141, 144, 145, 150, 155;
quoted, ii. 49; iv. 291.

Xenophon, quoted, i. 137;
maxim of, 281, 333, 447; ii. 115, 144, 178, 307;
the scene of his old age, iii. 24; v. 67, 72, 121, 139.

Xerxes, his saying, i. 39, 187;
and Arimanes, iii. 59, 60;
invasion of Greece, v. 451, 452.

Year, length of, in different planets, iii. 147.

Zaleucus, laws of, ii. 315.

Zaratas, ii. 327.

Zeno, saying of, i. 56;
anecdotes of, 72, 142, 283; ii. 321, 365, 455;
quoted, 467, 481; iii. 25, 113, 125, 128;
his definition of virtue, 462;
anecdote of, iv. 225; v. 382.

Zenocrates, v. 288, 377, 441.

Zeuxidamus, apothegm of, i. 410.

Zeuxippus, dialogue on health, i. 251-279; ii. 157 _et seq._;
iv. 270, 278, 288.

Zeuxis, reply of, i. 468.

Zopyrus Byzantius, his Third Book of Histories, v. 473.

Zoroaster, ii. 357; iv. 106.

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