Plutarch – Part II – Larus Thorhallsson

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

Plutarch. Moralia. Vol. II of Loeb Classical Library edition. Translated by F. C. Babbitt. 1928. Bill Thayer’s Website, Lacuscurtius. Retrieved 2025, from
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/De_fortuna*.html

ON FORTUNE
1: Man’s ways are chance and not sagacity.

Is it true that man’s ways are not justice either, or equality, or self-control, or decorum, but was it the result of chance and because of chance that Aristeides persevered in his poverty when he could have made himself master of great wealth, and that Scipio, having captured Carthage, neither took nor saw any of the spoil? Was it the result of chance and because of chance that Philocrates, having received money from Philip, “proceeded to spend it on trulls and trout,” and was it due to chance that Lasthenes and Euthycrates lost Olynthus, “measuring happiness by their bellies and the most shameless deeds”? Was it the result of chance that Alexander, the son of Philip, forbore to touch the captive women himself and punished those who offered them insult, and, on the other hand, was it because the Alexander who was the son of Priam yielded to the dictates of an evil genius or of chance that he lay with the wife of his host, and by her abduction filled two of our three continents with war and woes? For if these things happen because of chance, what is to hinder our saying that cats, goats, and apes because of chance are given over to greediness, lustfulness, and mischievous tricks?
2: If self-control, justice, and bravery exist, how is it possible to reason that intelligence does not exist; and if intelligence exists, must not sagacity exist also? For self-control is a kind of intelligence, they say, and justice requires the presence of intelligence. Or rather, that particular sagacity and intelligence which render men virtuous in the midst of pleasures we call continence and self-control, in perils and labours we call it perseverance and fortitude, in private dealings and in public life we call it equity and justice. Wherefore, if we impute the works of sagacity to chance, let the works of justice and of self-control be also ascribed to chance, and, by Heaven, let thieving, stealing purses, and licentious living all be ascribed to chance, and let us abandon all our reasoning processes and resign ourselves to chance, to be driven and carried, as dust or rubbish by a violent wind, hither and thither. If, then, sagacity does not exist, it is a fair inference that there can be no sagacious planning about what is to be done, and no consideration of searching for what is to the best advantage, but Sophocles indulged in idle talk when he said:

Whatever is pursued
May be achieved; neglected it escapes;

and so too in another place where he tries to distinguish different classes of actions:

What can be taught I learn; what can be found
I seek; but God I ask to answer prayer.

For what is there which can be found out or learned by mankind if the issue of all things is determined by chance? And what deliberative assembly of a State can there be which is not abolished, or advisory council of a king which is not dissolved, if all things are under the dominion of chance, which we reproach for being blind because we, like blind men, stumble against it? How can we help doing so when we pluck out sagacity, as it were our own eyes, and take as our guide in life a blind leader?
3: Yet, suppose someone among us should say that the act of seeing is chance and not vision nor the use of “light-bringing orbs,” as Plato calls the eyes, and that the act of hearing is chance and not a faculty apperceptive of a vibration in the air which is carried onward through ear and brain. If such were the case, it were well for us, as it appears, to beware of trusting our senses! But, as a matter of fact, Nature has conferred upon us sight, hearing, taste, smell, and our other members and their faculties to be cministers of sagacity and intelligence, and

Mind has sight and mind has hearing; all the rest is deaf and blind.

Precisely as would be our case if the sun did not exist, and we, for all the other stars, should be passing our life in a continual night, as Heracleitus affirms, so man, for all his senses, had he not mind and reason, would not differ at all in his life from the brutes. But as it is, we excel them and have power over them, not from chance or accidentally, but the cause thereof is Prometheus, or, in other words, the power to think and reason,

Which gives the foal of horse and ass, and get
Of bull, to serve us, and assume our tasks,

as Aeschylus puts it. Certainly, in so far as chance and nature’s endowment at birth are concerned, the great majority of brute animals are better off than man. For some are armed with horns, or teeth, or stings, and Empedocles says,

But as for hedgehogs
Growing upon their backs sharp darts of spines stand bristling,

and still others are shod and clad with scales or hair, with claws or horny hoofs. Man alone, as Plato says, “naked, unarmed, with feet unshod, and with no bed to lie in,” has been abandoned by Nature.

Yet by one gift all this she mitigates,

the gift of reasoning, diligence, and forethought.

Slight, of a truth, is the strength of man; and yet

By his mind’s resourcefulness
Doth he subjugate the monsters
Of the deep, and the purposes
Of the denizens of earth and air.

Horses are the lightest and swiftest of foot, yet they run for man. The dog is pugnacious and spirited, yet it watches over man. Fish is most savoury, and the pig very fat, yet for man they are nourishing and appetizing food. What is bigger than an elephant or more terrible to behold? But even this creature has been made the plaything of man, and a spectacle at public gatherings, and it learns to posture and dance and kneel. Such presentations are not without their use; indeed, they serve a purpose in that we may learn to what heights man’s intelligence raises him, above what it places him, and how he is master of all things, and in every way superior.

No, we are not invincible either in boxing or wrestling,
Nor are we swift in the race.

Indeed, in all these matters we are not so fortunate as the animals; yet we make use of experience, memory, wisdom, and skill, as Anaxagoras says, which are ours, and ours only, and we take their honey, and milk them, and carry and lead them at will, taking entire control over them. In all this, therefore, there is no element of chance at all, but solely and wholly sagacity and forethought.
4: Moreover, under the head of “man’s ways” would fall, no doubt, the activities of carpenters, copper-smiths, builders, and statuaries, wherein we see nothing brought to a successful conclusion accidentally or as it chances. That chance may sometimes contribute slightly to their success, but that the arts through themselves bring to perfection the most and greatest of their works, in plainly suggested by this poet:

Into the highway come, all craftsmen folk,
Who worship Labour, stern-eyed child of Zeus,
With sacred baskets placed about.

For the arts have Labour, that is Athena, and not Chance as their coadjutor… Rulers, weights, measures, and numbers are everywhere in use, so that the random and haphazard may find no place in any production. Indeed, the arts are said to be minor forms of intelligence, or rather offshoots of intelligence, and detached fragments of it interspersed amid life’s common necessities, as it is said in the allegory regarding fire, that it was divided into portions by Prometheus and scattered some here and some there. For thus, when intelligence is finely broken and divided, small portions and fragments of it have gone to their several stations.
5: It is therefore amazing how, if the arts have no need of chance to accomplish their own ends, the greatest and most perfect art of all, the consummation of the high repute and esteem to which man can attain, can count for nothing! But in the tightening and loosening of strings there is involved a certain sagacity, which men call music, and also in the preparation of food, to which we give the name of cookery, and in the cleaning of clothes, which we call fulling; and we teach our children to put on their shoes and clothes, and to take their meat with the right hand and hold their bread in the left, on the assumption that even these things do not come by chance, but require oversight and attention. But can it be that those things which are most important and most essential for happiness do not call for intelligence, nor have any part in the processes of reason and forethought? But nobody wets clay with water and leaves it, assuming that by chance and accidentally there will be bricks, nor after providing himself with wool and leather does he sit down with a prayer to Chance that they turn into a cloak and shoes for him; and when a man has amassed much gold and silver and a multitude of slaves, and has surrounded himself with spacious suites of rooms, and, in addition, has furnished them with costly couches and tables, does he imagine that these things, without the presence of intelligence in himself, will be happiness and a blissful life, free from grief and secure from change?
Somebody asked Iphicrates the general, as though undertaking to expose him, who he was, since he was “neither a man-at arms, nor archer, nor targeteer”; and he answered, “I am the man who commands and makes use of all these.” Intelligence is not gold or silver or repute or wealth or health or strength or beauty. What then is it? It is the something which is able to make good use of all these, and something through whose agency each of these is made pleasant, noteworthy, and profitable. Without it they are unserviceable, fruitless, and harmful, and they burden and disgrace their possessor. It is surely excellent advice that Hesiod’s Prometheus gives to Epimetheus:

Never to welcome
Any gifts from Zeus of Olympus, but always return them,

meaning the gifts of chance and external advantages; as if he were advising him not to play the flute if ignorant of music, nor to read if illiterate, nor to ride if unused to horses, thus advising him not to hold public office if a fool, nor to be rich if miserly, nor to marry if ruled by a woman. For not only is it true, as Demosthenes has said, that “undeserved success becomes a source of misconception for fools,” but undeserved good fortune also becomes a source of misery for the unthinking.

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

Plutarch. Moralia. Vol. IV of Loeb Classical Library edition. Translated by F. C. Babbitt. 1936. Bill Thayer’s Website, Lacuscurtius. Retrieved 2025, from
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Fortuna_Romanorum*.html

ON THE FORTUNE OF THE ROMANS
1: Virtue and Fortune, who have often engaged in many great contests, are now engaging each other in the present contest, which is the greatest of all; for in this they are striving for a decision regarding the hegemony of Rome, to determine whose work it is and which of them created such a mighty power. For to her who is victorious this will be no slight testimonial, but rather a defence against accusation. For Virtue is accused of being a fair thing, but unprofitable; Fortune of being a thing inconstant, but good. Virtue’s labours, they say, are fruitless, Fortune’s gifts untrustworthy. Who, then, will not declare, when Rome shall have been added to the achievements of one of the contestants, either that Virtue is a most profitable thing if she has done such good to good men, or that Good Fortune is a thing most steadfast if she has already preserved for so long a time that which she has bestowed?
The poet Ion in his prose works observes that Fortune is a thing very dissimilar to Wisdom, and yet she becomes the creator of things very similar: they both bring increase and added honours to men, they lead them on to high repute, to power, to dominion. What need to be tedious by enumerating the many examples? Even Nature herself, who creates and produces all things for us, some think to be Fortune, others Wisdom. Wherefore our present discourse does, in a measure, bestow a fair and enviable dignity upon Rome, if we raise the question over her, even as we do over earth and sea, heaven and stars, whether she has come to her present state by Fortune or by Forethought.
2: I believe myself to be right in suspecting that, even if Fortune and Virtue are engaged in a direct and continual strife and discord with each other, yet, at least for such a welding together of dominion and power…
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… For I reckon even Cleopatra as a part of Caesar’s Fortune, on whom, as on a reef, even so great a commander as Antony was wrecked and crushed that Caesar might rule alone. The tale is told of Caesar and Antony that, when there was much familiarity and intimacy between them, they often devoted their leisure to a game of ball or dice or even to fights of pet birds, such as quails or cocks; and Antony always retired from the field defeated. It is further related that one of his friends, who prided himself on his knowledge of divination, was often wont to speak freely to him and admonish him, “Sir, what business have you with this youth? Avoid him! Your repute is greater, you are older, you govern more men, you have fought in wars, you excel in experience; but your Guardian Spirit fears this man’s Spirit. Your Fortune is mighty by herself, but abases herself before his. Unless you keep far away from him, your Fortune will depart and go over to him!
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PLUTARCH – MORALIA

Plutarch. Moralia. Vol. VI of Loeb Classical Library edition. Translated by W. C. Helmbold. 1939. Bill Thayer’s Website, Lacuscurtius. Retrieved 2025, from
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/An_vitiositas_ad_infelicitatem_sufficiat*.html

WHETHER VICE BE SUFFICIENT TO CAUSE UNHAPPINESS
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2: Vice makes all men completely miserable, since as a creator of unhappiness it is clothed with absolute power, for it has no need of either instruments or ministers. But whereas despots, when they desire to make miserable those whom they punish, maintain executioners and torturers, or devise branding-irons and wedges; vice, without any apparatus, when it has joined itself to the soul, crushes and overthrows it, and fills the man with grief and lamentation, dejection and remorse. And this is the proof: many are silent under mutilation and endure scourging and being tortured by the wedge at the hands of masters or tyrants without uttering a cry, whenever by the application of reason the soul abates the pain and by main force, as it were, checks and represses it; but you cannot order anger to be quiet nor grief to be silent, nor can you persuade a man possessed by fear to stand his ground, nor one suffering from remorse not to cry out or tear his hair or smite his thigh. So much more violent is vice than either fire or sword.
3: Cities, as we know, when they give public notice of intent to let contracts for the bidding of temples or colossal statues, listen to the proposals of artists competing for the commission and bringing in their estimates and models, and then choose the man who will do the same work with the least expense and better than the others and more quickly. Come, then, let us suppose that we also give public proclamation of intent to contract for making life wretched, and that Fortune and Vice come to get the commission in a rival spirit. Fortune is provided with all manner of instruments and costly apparatus to render a life miserable and wretched; she brings in her train frightful robberies and wars, the foul bloodthirstiness of tyrants, and storms at sea and thunder from the sky; she compounds hemlock, she carries swords, she levies informers, she kindles fevers, she claps on fetters, and builds prison enclosures (and yet the greater part of these belong to Vice rather than to Fortune, but let us suppose them all Fortune’s). And let Vice stand by quite unarmed, needing no external aid against the man, and let her ask Fortune how she intends to make man wretched and dejected:

“Fortune,
Do you threaten poverty?…

… Do you mix a cup of poison? Did you not present this to Socrates also? And cheerfully and calmly, without trembling or changing either colour or posture, he drained it with great cheerfulness; and as he died the living esteemed him happy, believing that ‘not even in Hades would he be without some god-given portion.’ And as for your fire… And of the wise men in that part of the world, not one is considered enviable or happy, if, while he yet lives and is sane and healthy, he does not separate by fire his soul from his body and emerge pure from the flesh, with the mortal part washed away. Or will you reduce a man from splendid wealth and house and table and lavish living to a threadbare cloak and wallet and begging of his daily bread? These things were the beginning of happiness for Diogenes, of freedom and repute for Crates. But will you nail him to a cross or impale him on a stake? And what does Theodorus care whether he rots above ground or beneath?…
4: Whom, then, do these things make wretched? The unmanly and irrational, the unpracticed and untrained, those who retain from childhood their notions unchanged. Therefore Fortune is not a producer of perfect unhappiness if she does not have Vice to co-operate with her. For as a thread saws through the bone that has been soaked in ashes and vinegar, and as men bend and fashion ivory when it has been made soft and pliable by beer, but cannot do so otherwise, so Fortune, falling upon that which is of itself ill-affected and soft as the result of Vice, gouges it out and injures it. And just as the Parthian poison, though harmful to no one else nor injurious to those who touch it and carry it about, if it is merely brought into the presence of wounded men, it straightway destroys them, since they receive its effluence because of their previous susceptibility; so he who is liable to have his soul crushed by Fortune must have within himself some festering wound of his own in order that it may make whatever befalls him from without pitiful and lamentable.
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PLUTARCH – MORALIA

Plutarch. Moralia. Vol. VII of Loeb Classical Library edition. Translated by Phillip H. De Lacy and Benedict Einarson. 1959. Bill Thayer’s Website, Lacuscurtius. Retrieved 2025, from
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/De_se_ipsum_laudando*.html

ON PRAISING ONESELF INOFFENSIVELY
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… Thus Themistocles neither said nor did anything invidious at the time of his successes; but when he saw that the Athenians had grown weary of him and indifferent, he did not hesitate to say: “My innocent friends, why so tired of repeated benefits from the same hands?” And again: “In a storm you take shelter with me, as under a tree; but in fair weather you pluck the leaves as you pass me by.”…
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PLUTARCH – MORALIA

ON TRANQUILLITY
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But like people at sea who are cowardly and seasick and think that they would get through this voyage more comfortably if they should transfer from their little boat to a ship, and then again from the ship to a man-of war; but they accomplish nothing by the changes, since they carry their nausea and cowardice along with them; so the exchange of one mode of life for another does not relieve the soul of those things which cause it grief and distress: these are inexperience in affairs, unreasonableness, the want of ability or knowledge to make the right use of present conditions. These are the defects which, like a storm at sea, torment rich and poor alike, that afflict the married as well as the unmarried; because of these men avoid public life, then find their life of quiet unbearable; because of these men seek advancement at court, by which, when they have gained it, they are immediately bored.
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5: Plato, for instance, compared life to a game of dice in which we must try, not only to throw what suits us best, but also, when we have thrown, to make good use of whatever turns up. But with circumstances, though it is not in our power to throw what we please, yet it is our task, if we are wise, to accept in a suitable manner whatever accrues from Fortune and to assign to each event a place in which both what suits us shall help us most and what is unwanted shall do least harm. For those who are without skill and sense as to how they should live, like sick people whose bodies can endure neither heat nor cold, are elated by good fortune and depressed by adversity; and they are greatly disturbed by both, or rather by themselves in both and as much in what is called good as in the bad. Theodorus, called the Atheist, used to say that he offered his discourses with his right hand, but his audience received them with their left; so uninstructed persons, when Fortune presents herself adroitly on their right, often gauchely substitute their left hands in receiving her and cut a sorry figure. But men of sense, just as bees extract honey from thyme, the most pungent and the driest of plants, often in like manner draw from the most unfavourable circumstances something which suits them and is useful.
… For it is possible to change the direction of Fortune when she has given us things we do not wish. Diogenes was driven into exile: “Not so bad after all!” for after his exile he began to lead the life of a philosopher. Zeno of Citium had one merchantman remaining; when he learned that this had been sunk at sea and lost with all its cargo, he cried, “Much obliged, Fortune! You also drive me to the philosopher’s cloak.”…
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8: Therefore let us resume our discussion of circumstances. For just as in a fever everything we eat seems bitter and unpleasant to the taste, and yet when we see others taking the same food and finding no displeasure in it, we no longer continue to blame the food and the drink, but accuse ourselves and our malady; so we shall cease blaming and being disgruntled with circumstances if we see others accepting the same events cheerfully and without offence. And so it is conducive to tranquillity of mind, in the midst of happenings which are contrary to our wishes, not to overlook whatever we have that is pleasant and attractive, but, mingling good with bad, cause the better to outshine the worse. But as it is, while we turn away our eyes when they are wounded by too dazzling a light and refresh them with the tints and hues of flowers and grass, yet we strain the mind toward painful things and force it to dwell on the consideration of disagreeable matters, all but dragging it by compulsion away from those which are better. And yet one might adapt here not inaptly the remark addressed to the meddlesome man:

Why do you look so sharp on others’ ills,
Malignant man, yet overlook your own?

Why do you scrutinize too keenly your own trouble, my good sir, and continue to make it ever vivid and fresh in your mind, but do not direct your thoughts to those good things which you have?…
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… so we should not overlook even common and ordinary things, but take some account of them and be grateful that we are alive and well and look upon the sun; that there is neither war near factious strife among us, but that both the earth grants cultivation and the sea fair sailing to those who wish it; that we may speak or act, be silent or at leisure, as we choose. These things when they are present will afford us greater tranquillity of mind, if we but imagine them to be absent, and remind ourselves often how desirable is health to the sick, and peace to those at war, and, to an unknown stranger in so great a city, the acquisition of reputation and friends; and how painful it is to be deprived of these things when we have once had them. For it will not then be the case that we find each one of these important and valuable only when it has been lost, but worthless while securely held. Our not possessing it does not add value to anything, nor should we acquire these things as though they were of great worth and live in fear and trembling as though for things of great moment, lest we be deprived of them, and yet while we have them overlook and despise them as of no value: we should above all take care to use them for our pleasure and enjoyment, in order that we may bear their loss, if that should happen, with greater moderation. But most people, as Arcesilaüs said, think it right to examine poems and paintings and statues of others with the eyes of both the mind and the body, poring over them minutely and in every detail, whereas they neglect their own life, which has many not unpleasing subjects for contemplation, looking ever to externals and admiring the repute and the fortunes of others, as adulterers do other men’s wives, yet despising themselves and their own possessions.
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… But as it is, we do not expect the vine to bear figs nor the olive grapes, but, for ourselves, if we have not at one and the same time the advantages of both the wealthy and the learned, of both commanders and philosophers, of both flatterers and the outspoken, of both the thrifty and the lavish, we slander ourselves, we are displeased, we despise ourselves as living an incomplete and trivial life.
Furthermore, we see that Nature also admonishes us; for just as she has provided different foods for different beasts and has not made them all carnivorous or seed-pickers or root-diggers, so has she given to men a great variety of means for gaining a livelihood,

To shepherd and ploughman and fowler and to him whom the sea
Provides with sustenance.

We should, therefore, choose the calling appropriate to ourselves, cultivate it diligently, let the rest alone…
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14: But that every man has within himself the store-rooms of tranquillity and discontent, and that the jars containing blessings and evils are not stored “on the threshold of Zeus,” but are in the soul, is made plain by the differences in men’s passions. For the foolish overlook and neglect good things even when they are present, because their thoughts are ever intent upon the future, but the wise by remembrance make even those benefits that are no longer at hand to be vividly existent for themselves. For the present good, which allows us to touch it but for the smallest portion of time and then eludes our perception, seems to fools to have no further reference to us or to belong to us at all; but like that painting of a man twisting rope in Hades, who permits a donkey grazing near by to eat it up as he plaits it, so insensible and thankless forgetfulness steals upon the multitude and takes possession of them, consuming every action and success, every pleasant moment of leisure and companionship and enjoyment; it does not allow life to become unified, when past is interwoven with present, but separating yesterday, as though it were different, from to day, and to morrow likewise, as though it were not the same as to day, forgetfulness straightway makes every event to have never happened because it is never recalled…
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15: This, then, is a matter disturbing to tranquillity of mind; and another, even more disturbing, arises when, like flies which slip off the smooth surfaces of mirrors, but stick to places which are rough or scratched, men drift away from joyous and agreeable matters and become entangled in the remembrance of unpleasant things; or rather, as they relate that when beetles have fallen into a place at Olynthus which is called “Death-to Beetles,” they are unable to get out, but turn and circle about there until they die in that place, so when men have slipped into brooding upon their misfortunes, they do not wish to recover or revive from that state. But, like colours in a painting, so in the soul it is right that we should place in the foreground bright and cheerful experiences and conceal and suppress the gloomy; for to wipe them out and be rid of them altogether is impossible. “For the harmony of the universe, like that of a lyre or a bow, is by alternatives,” and in mortal affairs there is nothing pure and unmixed. But as in music there are low notes and high notes, and in grammar there are vowels and consonants, yet a musician or a grammarian is not the man who dislikes and avoids the one or the other, but rather the man who knows how to use all and to blend them properly, so also in human affairs, which contain the principles of opposition to each other (since, as Euripides has it,

The good and bad cannot be kept apart,
But there’s some blending, so that all is well),

we should not be disheartened or despondent in adversity, but like musicians who achieve harmony by constantly deadening bad music with better and encompassing the bad with the good, we should make the blending of our life harmonious and conformable to our own nature.
For it is not true, as Menander says, that

By every man at birth a Spirit stands,
A guide of virtue for life’s mysteries;

but rather, as Empedocles affirms, two Fates, as it were, or Spirits, receive in their care each one of us at birth and consecrate us:

Chthonia was there and far-seeing Heliopê,
And bloody Deris, grave-eyed Harmonia,
Callisto, Aeschra, Thoösa, and Denaea,
Lovely Nemertes, dark-eyed Asapheia.

16: The result is that since we at our birth received the mingled seeds of each of these affections, and since therefore our nature possesses much unevenness, a man of sense prays for better things, but expects the contrary as well, and, avoiding excess, deals with both conditions. For not only does “he who has least need of the morrow,” as Epicurus says, “most gladly advance to meet the morrow,” but also wealth and reputation and power and public office delight most of all those who least fear their opposites. For the violent desire for each of these implants a most violent fear that they may not remain, and so renders pleasure in them weak and unstable, like a fluttering flame. But the man whom Reason enables to say to Fortune without fear and trembling,

Welcome to me if any good thing you bring;
But if you fail, the pain is very slight,

his confidence and the absence of fear that their loss would be unbearable cause him to make most pleasant use of present advantages…
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17: And, to speak generally, although some of the things which happen against our will do by their very nature bring pain and distress, yet since it is through false opinion that we learn and become accustomed to be disgruntled with the greatest part of them, it is not unprofitable to have the verse of Menander ever ready against the latter:

No harm’s been done you, if you none admit

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Therefore we should not altogether debase and depreciate Nature in the belief that she has nothing strong, stable, and beyond the reach of Fortune, but, on the contrary, since we know that the corrupt and perishable part of man wherein he lies open to Fortune is small, and that we ourselves are masters of the better part, in which the greatest of our blessings are situated — right opinions and knowledge and the exercise of reason terminating in the acquisition of virtue, all of which have their being inalienable and indestructible — knowing all this, we should face the future undaunted and confident and say to Fortune what Socrates, when he was supposed to be replying to his accusers, was really saying to the jury, “Anytus and Meletus are able to take away my life, but they cannot hurt me.” Fortune, in fact, can encompass us with sickness, take away our possessions, slander us to people or despot; but she cannot make the good and valiant and high-souled man base or cowardly, mean, ignoble, or envious, nor can she deprive us of that disposition, the constant presence of which is of more help in facing life than is a pilot in facing the sea. For a pilot cannot calm a savage wave or a wind, nor can he find a harbour wherever he wishes at need, nor can he await the event confidently and without trembling; as long as he has not despaired, making use of his skill,

With the mainsail dropped to the lower mast
He flees from the murky sea,

whereas when the sea towers over him, he sits there quaking and trembling. But the disposition of the wise man yields the highest degree of calm to his bodily affections, destroying by means of self-control, temperate diet, and moderate exertion the conditions leading to disease; even if the beginning of some evil comes from without, “he rides it out with light and well-furled sail,” as Asclepiades has it, just as one passes through a storm. But if some great unforeseen disaster comes upon him and masters him, the harbour is close at hand and he may swim away from his body, as from a leaky boat.
18: For it is the fear of death, not the desire for life, which makes the fool dependent on his body, clinging to it as Odysseus did to the fig-tree through fear of Charybdis below,

Where breezes let him neither stay nor sail,

so that he is displeased at this and fearful of that. But he who understands somehow or other the nature of the soul and reflects that the change it undergoes at death will be for the better, or at least not for the worse, has no small provision to secure tranquillity of mind for facing life — fearlessness towards death. For he who can live pleasantly when the agreeable and congenial part of life is in the ascendant, but when alien and unnatural principles prevail, can depart fearlessly, saying,

The god himself shall free me, when I will,

what can we imagine might befall such a man as this that would vex or trouble or disturb him? For he who said, “I have anticipated you, Fortune, and taken from you every entry whereby you might get at me,” encouraged himself, not with bolts or keys or battlements, but by precepts and reasoning in which everyone who desires may share. And one must not despair or disbelieve any of these arguments, but should admire and emulate them and, being filled with their inspiration, make trial of oneself and observe oneself in smaller matters with a view to the greater, not avoiding or rejecting from the soul the care of these things, nor taking refuge in the remark, “Perhaps nothing will be more difficult than this.” For languor and flabby softness are implanted by that self-indulgence of the soul which ever occupies itself with the easiest way, and retreats from the undesirable to what is most pleasant. But the soul which endeavours, by study and the severe application of its powers of reasoning, to form an idea of what sickness, suffering, and exile really are will find much that is false and empty and corrupt in what appears to be difficult and fearful, as the reason shows in each particular.
19: And yet many shudder even at the verse of Menander,

No man alive may say, “I shall not suffer this,”

since they do not know how much it helps in warding off grief to be able by practice and study to look Fortune in the face with eyes open, and not to manufacture in oneself “smooth, soft” fancies, like one reared in the shade of many hopes which ever yield and hold firm against nothing. We can, however, make this reply to Menander: “True,

No man alive may say, ‘I shall not suffer this,’

yet while still alive one can say, ‘I will not do this: I will not lie nor play the villain nor defraud nor scheme.’ ” For this is in our power and is not a small, but a great help toward tranquillity of mind. Even as, on the contrary again,

My conscience, since I know I’ve done a dreadful deed,

like an ulcer in the flesh, leaves behind it in the soul regret which ever continues to wound and prick it. For the other pangs reason does away with, but regret is caused by reason itself, since the soul, together with its feeling of shame, is stung and chastised by itself. For as those who shiver with ague or burn with fevers are more distressed and pained than those who suffer the same discomforts through heat or cold from a source outside the body, so the pangs which fortune brings, coming, as it were, from a source without, are lighter to bear; but that lament,

None is to blame for this but me myself,

which is chanted over one’s errors, coming as it does from within, makes the pain even heavier by reason of the disgrace one feels. And so it is that no costly house nor abundance of gold nor pride of race nor pomp of office, no grace of language, no eloquence, impart so much calm and serenity to life as does a soul free from evil acts and purposes and possessing an imperturbable and undefiled character as the source of its life, a source whence flow fair actions which have both an inspired and joyous activity joined with a lofty pride therein, and a memory sweeter and more stable than that hope of Pindar’s which sustains old age. For do not censers, as Carneades said, even if they have been completely emptied, retain their fragrance for a long time, and in the soul of the wise man do not fair actions leave behind the remembrance of them eternally delightful and fresh, by which joy in them is watered and flourishes, and he comes to despise those who bewail and abuse life as a land of calamities or a place of exile appointed here for our souls?
20: And I am delighted with Diogenes, who, when he saw his host in Sparta preparing which much ado for a certain festival, said, “Does not a good man consider every day a festival?” and a very splendid one, to be sure, if we are sound of mind. For the universe is a most holy temple and most worthy of a god; into it man is introduced through birth as a spectator, not of hand-made or immovable images, but of those sensible representations of knowable things that the divine mind, says Plato, has revealed, representations which have innate within themselves the beginnings of life and motion, sun and moon and stars, rivers which ever discharge fresh water, and earth which sends forth nourishment for plants and animals. Since life is a most perfect initiation into these things and a ritual celebration of them, it should be full of tranquillity and joy…
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PLUTARCH – MORALIA

ON EXILE
1: As it is with our friends, so it is with the words we speak: best and most to be depended upon, we are told, are those which appear in adversity to some purpose and give help; for many people visit the unfortunate and talk to them, but their efforts do no good, or rather do harm. These people are like men unable to swim who try to rescue the drowning — they hug them close and help to drag them under. The language addressed to us by friends and real helpers should mitigate, not vindicate, what distresses us; it is not partners in tears and lamentation, like tragic choruses, that we need in unwished-for circumstances, but men who speak frankly and instruct us that grief and self-abasement are everywhere futile, that to indulge in them is unwarranted and unwise, and that where the facts themselves, when reason has groped them out and brought them to light, enable a man to say to himself

You’ve not been hurt, unless you so pretend,

it is utterly absurd not to ask the body what it has suffered, or the soul whether it is the worse for this mischance, but instead to seek instruction in grief from those who come from the outside world to join their vexation and resentment to our own.
2: Let us, therefore, withdraw from the world and taking our calamities one by one examine their weight, as if they were so many loads; for while the burden felt by the body is the actual weight of the thing that presses upon it, the soul often adds the heaviness to circumstances from itself. It is by nature that stone is hard, it is by nature that ice is cold; it is not from outside themselves, fortuitously, that they convey the sensation of rigidity and freezing; but banishment, loss of fame, and loss of honours, like their opposites, crowns, public office, and front-seat privileges, whose measure of causing sorrow and joy is not their own nature, but our judgement, every one makes light or heavy for himself, and easy to bear or the reverse. We can listen on the one hand to Polyneices, when, on being asked

What is the loss of country? A great ill?

he replies

The greatest; and no words can do it justice;

on the other hand, we can hear what Alcman has to say, as the author of the little epigram has represented him:

Sardis, of old the sojourn of my sires,
Had I been bred in thee, then had I been
Some priest or temple eunuch, tricked in gold,
Smiting the painted timbrels; now instead
My name is Alcman, and my country Sparta,
City of many tripods; I have been taught
The Hellenic Muses, who have raised me high
Above the despots Dascyles and Gyges.

Thus opinion had made the same event useful for the one, as it makes a coin pass current, but useless and harmful to the other.
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4: As, then, in the comedy a character who is urging an unfortunate friend to take heart and make a stand against Fortune, when asked, “How?” replies, “like a philosopher,” so let us too make a stand against her by playing the philosopher worthily. But how are we to face

Zeus when he pours down rain? And how the North Wind?

Why, we look for a fire, a bath-house, a cloak, a roof: in a rainstorm we do not sit idle or lament. You too, then, are as able as any man to revive this chilled portion of your life and restore it to warmth: you need no further resources; it is enough to use wisely those you have. For whereas the cupping-glasses of physicians, by drawing out of the body its most worthless elements, relieve and preserve the rest, lovers of gift and fault-finding, by constantly collecting and counting up what is worst in their lot, and by getting absorbed in their troubles, make even the most useful things in it useless for themselves at the moment when these would naturally afford the greatest help. For it is not Zeus, dear friend, that sits by the “two urns” of Homer, which stand in heaven “brimful,” the one of good, the other of evil “dooms,” dispensing them, releasing to some a gentle and well-tempered flow, to others, an undiluted stream of misery; rather, it is ourselves: the wise among us, by drawing from the good and pouring it upon the bad, make their lives more pleasant and potable; whereas in the multitude, as in filters, the worst remains and adheres as the better flows away and vanishes.
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7: The Egyptians indeed, who because of some outbreak of anger and severity on the part of their king, were migrating to Ethiopia, replied to those who entreated them to return to their children and wives by pointing with Cynic licence to their private parts and remarking that they would be at no loss for either marriage or children so long as they had these with them. One can, however, with greater decency and decorum, say that wherever a man happens to find a moderate provision for his livelihood, there that man lacks neither city nor hearth nor is an alien. Only he must also have good sense and reason, as a skipper needs an anchor that he may moor in any haven and make use of it. For while loss of wealth cannot easily and quickly be repaired, every city at once becomes a native city to the man who has learned to make use of it and has roots which can live and thrive everywhere and take hold in any region, roots such as Themistocles and Demetrius of Phalerum had. For Demetrius was after his banishment first among the friends of Ptolemy at Alexandria, and not only lived in plenty himself, but even used to send largesse to the Athenians; while Themistocles, when royally maintained by the King’s bounty, is reported to have said to his wife and children: “It would have been our undoing not to have been undone.” For this reason, to the one who remarked: “The Sinopians condemned you to banishment from Pontus,” Diogenes the Cynic replied: “But I condemned them to stay there,” —

Out where meet the shore
The breakers of the Inhospitable Sea.

Stratonicus asked his host in Seriphos what crime was punished there with banishment; when told that persons guilty of fraud were expelled, he said: “Then why not commit fraud and escape from this confinement?” — where the comic poet says that the figs are gathered in with slings, and remarks that the island is well provided with every incommodity.
8: Indeed, if you lay aside unfounded opinion and consider the truth, the man who has a single city is a stranger and an alien to all the rest; for it is felt he can neither in decency nor in justice forsake his own city to inhabit another:

Your lot is Sparta: look to Sparta then,

whether it be obscure, or unhealthy, or a prey to faction and turbulence. But Fortune grants possession of what city he pleases to the man she has deprived of his own. For that excellent precept of the Pythagoreans, “choose the best life, and familiarity will make it pleasant,” is here too wise and useful: “choose the best and most pleasant city, and time will make of it your native land” — a native land that does not distract you, is not importunate, does not command… For if a person in his senses and not utterly infatuated bears this in mind, he will choose, if exiled, to live even on an island, Gyaros or Cinaros,

Rocky, unfit for corn or vine or tree,

not downcast or lamenting or uttering the words of the women in Simonides

The clamour of the blue salt sea
Tossing about me, hems me in,

but he will rather reason as Philip did, who said, on being thrown in wrestling, as he turned about and saw the imprint of his body: “Good God! How small a portion of the earth we hold by nature, yet we covet the whole world!”
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11: Zeno indeed, when he learned that his only remaining ship had been engulfed with its cargo by the sea, exclaimed: “Well done, Fortune! thus to confine me to a threadbare cloak” and a philosopher’s life; while a man not wholly infatuated or mad for the mob would not, I think, on being confined to an island, reproach Fortune, but would commend her for taking away from him all his restlessness and aimless roving, wanderings in foreign lands and perils at sea and tumults in the market place, and giving him a life that was settled, leisurely, undistracted, and truly his own, describing with centre and radius a circle containing the necessities that meet his needs. For what island is there that does not afford a house, a walk, a bath, fish and hares for those who wish to indulge in hunting and sport? And best of all, the quiet for which others thirst, you can repeatedly enjoy. But at home, as men play at draughts and retire from the public eye, informers and busybodies track them down and hunt them out of their suburban estates and parks and bring them back by force to the market place and court; whereas it is not the persons who plague us, who come to beg or borrow money, to entreat us to go surety for them or help in canvassing an election, that sail to an island, it is the best of our connexions and intimates that do so out of friendship and affection, while the rest of life, if one desires leisure and has learned to use it, is left inviolate and sacred. He that calls those persons happy who run about in the world outside and use up most of their lives at inns and ferry-stations is like the man who fancies that the planets enjoy greater felicity than the fixed stars. And yet each planet, revolving in a single sphere, as on an island, preserves its station; for “the Sun will not transgress his bounds,” says Heracleitus; “else the Erinyes, ministers of Justice, will find him out.”
12: But, my dear friend, let us address the preceding remarks and the like and repeat them as a spell to those others who have been banished to an island and are cut off from the rest of the world by

The grey salt sea, that bars the way to many
Against their will;

but for you, to whom one solitary spot is not appointed, but forbidden, the exclusion from one city is the freedom to choose from all. Further, set off against the consideration “I do not hold office or sit in the council or preside at games” the other consideration: “I am not involved in faction; I am not exhausting my fortune; I wait upon no governor; I care not now who has obtained the province, whom he is quick to anger or in other ways oppressive.” But we are like Archilochus. As he, overlooking the fruitful fields and vineyards of Thasos, because of its steep and rugged surface maligned it, saying

This island, like the backbone of an ass,
Stands up beneath its cover of wild wood,

so we, intent upon one part of exile, lack of fame, overlook its lack of politics, its leisure, and its freedom. Yet the kings of the Persians were called happy for spending the winter in Babylon, the summer in Media, and the most pleasant part of the spring in Susa. Surely the exile too is free to sojourn in Eleusis during the Mysteries, to keep holiday in the city at the Dionysia, and to visit Delphi for the Pythian and Corinth for the Isthmian games, if he is fond of spectacles; if not, he has at his command leisure, walking, reading, undisturbed sleep, and what Diogenes expressed when he said: “Aristotle lunches at Philip’s pleasure, Diogenes at his own,” since no politics or magistrate or governor disrupts the customary tenor of his life.
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16: But since many are stirred by the words of Euripides, who is thought to arraign exile very forcibly, let us see what he has to say on the several counts of his indictment, as he presents them in the form of question and answer:

Joc. What is the loss of country? A great ill?
Pol. Surpassing great; no words can do it justice.
Joc. What is it like? What ills beset the banished?
Pol. One greater than the rest: speech is not free.
Joc. That is a slave’s part — not to speak one’s mind.
Pol. The folly of the mighty must be borne.

These initial assumptions are wrong and untrue. In the first place it is not a slave’s part “not to speak one’s mind,” but that of a man of sense on occasions and in matters that demand silence and restraint of speech, as Euripides himself has elsewhere put it better:

Silence in season, speech where speech is safe.

In the next place we are compelled to bear “the folly of the mighty” no less at home than in exile; indeed, those who remain behind are often in even greater terror of men who wield unjust power in cities through chicane or violence than those who have taken their departure…
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… Nay, exile does not even destroy freedom of speech in geometers and grammarians, when they converse about the subjects they know and have been taught; however, then, could exile destroy it in good and worthy men? It is meanness of spirit that everywhere “stops up the voice, ties the tongue, chokes, imposes silence.”
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Now as to the matters at which Aeschylus hinted darkly when he said

And pure Apollo, god exiled from heaven

“let my lips” in the words of Herodotus “be sealed”; Empedocles, however, when beginning the presentation of his philosophy, says by way of prelude:

A law there is, an oracle of Doom,
Of old enacted by the assembled gods,
That if a Daemon — such as live for ages —
Defile himself with foul and sinful murder,
He must for seasons thrice ten thousand roam
Far from the Blest: such is the path I tread,
I too a wanderer and exile from heaven,

indicating that not he himself merely, but all of us, beginning with himself, are sojourners here and strangers and exiles. “For,” he says, “no commingling of blood or breath, O mortals, gave our souls their being and beginning; it is the body, earth-born and mortal, that has been fashioned out of these,” and as the soul has come hither from elsewhere, he euphemistically calls birth a “journey, using the mildest of terms. But it is truest to say that the soul is an exile and a wanderer, driven forth by divine decrees and laws; and then, as on an island buffeted by the seas, imprisoned within the body “like an oyster in its shell,” as Plato says, because it does not remember or recall

What honour and what high felicity

it has left, not leaving Sardis for Athens or Corinth for Lemnos or Scyros, but Heaven and the Moon for earth and life on earth, if it shifts but a short distance here from one spot to another, it is resentful and feels strange, drooping like a base-born plant. And yet for a plant one region is more favourable than another for thriving and growth, but from a man no place can take away happiness, as none can take away virtue or wisdom; nay, Anaxagoras in prison was busied with squaring the circle, and Socrates, when he drank the hemlock, engaged in philosophy and invited his companions to do the same, and was by them deemed happy; whereas Phaëthon and Tantalus, as poets tell, when they had ascended to heaven, met with the most grievous disasters through their folly.

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

Plutarch. Plutarch’s Morals. Translated by Arthur Richard Shiletto. London, George Bell and Sons. 1898. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg, 2007. Retrieved 2025, from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23639/23639-h/23639-h.htm

ON THOSE WHO ARE PUNISHED BY THE DEITY LATE
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ii. Then said Patrocleas, “The slowness and delay of the deity in punishing the wicked used to seem to me a very dreadful thing, but now in consequence of his speech I come as it were new and fresh to the notion. Yet long ago I was vexed when I heard that line of Euripides,

“He does delay, such is the Deity
In nature.”

For indeed it is not fitting that the deity should be slow in anything, and least of all in the punishment of the wicked, seeing that they are not slow or sluggish in doing evil, but are hurried by their passions into crime at headlong speed. Moreover, as Thucydides says, when punishment follows as closely as possible upon wrong-doing, it blocks up the road at once for those who would follow up their villainy if it were successful. For no debt so much as that of justice paid behind time damps the hopes and dejects the mind of the wronged person, and aggravates the audacity and daring of the wrong-doer; whereas the punishment that follows crime immediately not only checks future outbreaks but is also the greatest possible comfort to the injured. And so I am often troubled when I consider that remark of Bias, who told, it seems, a bad man that he was not afraid that he would escape punishment, but that he would not live to see it. For how did the Messenians who were killed long before derive any benefit from the punishment of Aristocrates? For he had been guilty of treason at the battle of The Great Trench, but had reigned over the Arcadians for more than twenty years without being found out, but afterwards was detected and paid the penalty, but they were no longer alive. Or what consolation was brought to the people of Orchomenus, who lost their sons and friends and relatives in consequence of the treason of Lyciscus, by the disease which settled upon him long afterwards and spread all over his body? For he used to go and dip and soak his feet in the river, and uttered imprecations and prayed that they might rot off if he was guilty of treason or crime. Nor was it permitted to the children’s children of those that were slain to see at Athens the tearing out of their graves the bodies of those atrocious criminals that had killed them, and the carrying them beyond their borders. And so it seems strange in Euripides using the following argument to deter people from vice:

“Fear not, for vengeance will not strike at once
Your heart, or that of any guilty wretch,
But silently and with slow foot it moves,
And when their time’s come will the wicked reach.”

This is no doubt the very reason why the wicked incite and cheer themselves on to commit lawless acts, for crime shows them a fruit visible and ripe at once, but a punishment late, and long subsequent to the enjoyment.”
iii. When Patrocleas had said thus much, Olympicus interfered, “There is another consideration, Patrocleas, the great absurdity involved in these delays and long-suffering of the deity. For the slowness of punishment takes away belief in providence, and the wicked, observing that no evil follows each crime except long afterwards, attribute it when it comes to mischance, and look upon it in the light more of accident than punishment, and so receive no benefit from it, being grieved indeed when the misfortune comes, but feeling no remorse for what they have done amiss. For, as in the case of a horse, the whipping or spurring that immediately follows upon a stumble or some other fault is a corrective and brings him to his duty, but pulling and backing him with the bit and shouting at him long afterwards seems to come from some other motive than a desire to teach him, for he is put to pain without being shown his fault; so the vice which each time it stumbles or offends is at once punished and checked by correction is most likely to come to itself and be humble and stand in awe of the deity, as one that beholds men’s acts and passions and does not punish behind time; whereas that justice that, according to Euripides, “steals on silently and with slow foot,” and falls upon the wicked some time or other, seems to resemble more chance than providence by reason, of its uncertainty, delay, and irregularity. So that I do not see what benefit there is in those mills of the gods that are said to grind late, since they obscure the punishment, and obliterate the fear, of evil-doing.”
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… For if it is no easy matter for anyone not a professional to conjecture why the surgeon performed an operation later rather than sooner, or why he ordered his patient to take a bath to-day rather than yesterday, how is it easy or safe for a mortal to say anything else about the deity than that he knows best the time to cure vice, and applies to each his punishment as the doctor administers a drug, and that a punishment not of the same magnitude, or applied at the same time, in all cases. For that the cure of the soul, which is called justice, is the greatest of all arts is testified by Pindar as well as by ten thousand others, for he calls God, the ruler and lord of all things, the greatest artificer as the creator of justice, whose function it is to determine when, and how, and how far, each bad man is to be punished… And generally one might mention many absurdities in laws, if one did not know the mind of the legislator, or understand the reason for each particular piece of legislation. How is it wonderful then, if human affairs are so difficult to comprehend, that it is no easy task to say in connection with the gods, why they punish some offenders early, and others late?
v. This is not a pretext for evading the subject, but merely a request for lenient judgement, that our discourse, looking as it were for a haven and place of refuge, may rise to the difficulty with greater confidence basing itself on probability. Consider then first that, according to Plato, god, making himself openly a pattern of all things good, concedes human virtue, which is in some sort a resemblance to himself, to those who are able to follow him. For all nature, being in disorder, got the principle of change and became order by a resemblance to and participation in the nature and virtue of the deity. The same Plato also tells us that nature put eyesight into us, in order that the soul by beholding and admiring the heavenly bodies might accustom itself to welcome and love harmony and order, and might hate disorderly and roving propensities, and avoid aimless reliance on chance, as the parent of all vice and error. For man can enjoy no greater blessing from god than to attain to virtue by the earnest imitation of the noblest qualities of the divine nature. And so he punishes the wicked leisurely and long after, not being afraid of error or after repentance through punishing too hastily, but to take away from us that eager and brutish thirst for revenge, and to teach us that we are not to retaliate on those that have offended us in anger, and when the soul is most inflamed and distorted with passion and almost beside itself for rage, like people satisfying fierce thirst or hunger, but to imitate the mildness and long-suffering of the deity, and to avenge ourselves in an orderly and decent manner, only when we have taken counsel with time long enough to give us the least possible likelihood of after repentance. For it is a smaller evil, as Socrates said, to drink dirty water when excessively thirsty, than, when one’s mind is disturbed and full of rage and fury, before it is settled and becomes pure, to glut our revenge on the person of a relation and kinsman. For it is not the punishment that follows as closely as possible upon wrong-doing, as Thucydides said, but that which is more remote, that observes decorum. For as Melanthius says of anger,

“Fell things it does when it the mind unsettles,”

so also reason acts with justice and moderation, when it banishes rage and passion. So also people are made milder by the example of other men, as when they hear that Plato, when he held his stick over his slave to correct him, waited some time, as he himself has told us, to compose his anger; and that Archytas, having learned of some wrong or disorderly action on the part of some of his farm labourers, knowing that at the time he was in a very great rage and highly incensed at them, did nothing to them, but merely departed, saying, “You may thank your stars that I am in a rage with you.” If then the remembrance of the words and recorded acts of men abates the fierceness and intensity of our rage, much more likely is it that we (observing that the deity, though without either fear or repentance in any case, yet puts off his punishments and defers them for some time) shall be reserved in our views about such matters, and shall think that mildness and long-suffering which the god exhibits a divine part of virtue, reforming a few by speedy punishment, but benefiting and correcting many by a tardy one.
vi. Let us consider in the second place that punishments inflicted by men for offences regard only retaliation, and, when the offender is punished, stop and go no further; so that they seem to follow offences yelping at them like a dog, and closely pursuing at their heels as it were. But it is likely that the deity would look at the state of any guilty soul that he intended to punish, if haply it might turn and repent, and would give time for reformation to all whose vice was not absolute and incurable. For knowing how great a share of virtue souls come into the world with, deriving it from him, and how strong and lasting is their nobility of nature, and how it breaks out into vice against its natural disposition through the corruption of bad habits and companions, and afterwards in some cases reforms itself, and recovers its proper position, he does not inflict punishment on all persons alike; but the incorrigible he at once removes from life and cuts off, since it is altogether injurious to others, but most of all to a man’s own self, to live in perpetual vice, whereas to those who seem to have fallen into wrong-doing, rather from ignorance of what was good than from deliberate choice of what was bad, he gives time to repent. But if they persist in vice he punishes them too, for he has no fear that they will escape him. Consider also how many changes take place in the life and character of men, so that the Greeks give the names τρόπος and ἦθος to the character, the first word meaning change, and the latter the immense force and power of habit. I think also that the ancients called Cecrops half man and half dragon not because, as some say, he became from a good king wild and dragon-like, but contrariwise because he was originally perverse and terrible, and afterwards became a mild and humane king. And if this is uncertain, at any rate we know that Gelon and Hiero, both Sicilians, and Pisistratus the son of Hippocrates, though they got their supreme power by bad means, yet used it for virtuous ends, and though they mounted the throne in an irregular way, yet became good and useful princes… And Lydiades was tyrant in Megalopolis, yet in the very height of his power changing his ideas and being disgusted with injustice, he restored their old constitution to the citizens, and fell gloriously, fighting against the enemy in behalf of his country… For great natures produce nothing little, nor can their energy and activity rust owing to their keen intellect, but they toss to and fro as at sea till they come to a settled and durable character. As then one inexperienced in farming, seeing a spot full of thick bushes and rank growth, full of wild beasts and streams and mud, would not think much of it, while to one who has learnt how to discriminate and discern between different kind of soils all these are various tokens of the richness and goodness of the land, so great natures break out into many strange excesses, which exasperate us at first beyond bearing, so that we think it right to cut off such offenders and stop their career at once, whereas a better judge, seeing the good and noble even in these, waits for age and the season which nature appoints for gathering fruit to bring sense and virtue.
vii. So much for this point. Do you not think also that some of the Greeks did well to adopt that Egyptian law which orders a pregnant woman condemned to death not to suffer the penalty till after she has given birth?” “Certainly,” said all the company. I continued, “Put the case not of a woman pregnant, but of a man who can in process of time bring to light and reveal some secret act or plan, point out some unknown evil, or devise some scheme of safety, or invent something useful and necessary, would it not be better to defer his execution, and wait the result of his meditation? That is my opinion, at least.”… And of the mercenaries that plundered this very temple most crossed over into Sicily with Timoleon, and after they had conquered the Carthaginians and put down their authority, perished miserably, miserable wretches that they were. For no doubt the deity makes use of some wicked men, as executioners, to punish others, and so I think he crushes as it were most tyrants. For as the gall of the hyena and rennet of the seal, both nasty beasts in all other respects, are useful in certain diseases, so when some need sharp correction, the deity casts upon them the implacable fury of some tyrant, or the savage ferocity of some prince, and does not remove the bane and trouble till their fault be got rid of and purged…
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viii. “And do you not all think that it is better that punishment should take place at the fitting time and in the fitting manner rather than quickly and on the spur of the moment? Consider the case of Callippus, who with the very dagger with which he slew Dion, pretending to be his friend, was afterwards slain by his own friends. And when Mitius the Argive was killed in a tumult, a brazen statue in the market-place fell on his murderer and killed him during the public games. And of course, Patrocleas, you know all about Bessus the Pæonian, and about Aristo the Œtæan leader of mercenaries.” “Not I, by Zeus,” said Patrocleas, “but I should like to hear.” “Aristo,” I continued, “at the permission of the tyrants removed the necklace of Eriphyle which was hung up in this temple, and took it to his wife as a present; but his son being angry with his mother for some reason or other, set the house on fire, and burnt all that were in it…
ix. “These cases,” I continued, “we cite supposing, as has been laid down, that there is a deferring of punishment to the wicked; and, for the rest, I think we ought to listen to Hesiod, who tells us—not like Plato, who asserts that punishment is a condition that follows crime—that it is contemporaneous with it, and grows with it from the same source and root. For Hesiod says,

“Evil advice is worst to the adviser;”

and,

“He who plots mischief ‘gainst another brings
It first on his own pate.”

The cantharis is said to have in itself the antidote to its own sting, but wickedness, creating its own pain and torment, pays the penalty of its misdeeds not afterwards but at the time of its ill-doing. And as every malefactor about to pay the penalty of his crime in his person bears his cross, so vice fabricates for itself each of its own torments, being the terrible author of its own misery in life, wherein in addition to shame it has frequent fears and fierce passions and endless remorse and anxiety. But some are just like children, who, seeing malefactors in the theatres in golden tunics and purple robes with crowns on and dancing, admire them and marvel at them, thinking them happy, till they see them goaded and lashed and issuing fire from their gaudy but cheap garments. For most wicked people, though they have great households and conspicuous offices and great power, are yet being secretly punished before they are seen to be murdered or hurled down rocks, which is rather the climax and end of their punishment than the punishment itself. For as Plato tells us that Herodicus the Selymbrian having fallen into consumption, an incurable disease, was the first of mankind to mix exercise with the art of healing, and so prolonged his own life and that of others suffering from the same disease, so those wicked persons who seem to avoid immediate punishment, receive a longer and not slower punishment, not later but extending over a wider period; for they are not punished in their old age, but rather grow old in perpetual punishment. I speak of course of long time as a human being, for to the gods all the period of man’s life is as nothing, and so to them ‘now and not thirty years ago’ means no more than with us torturing or hanging a malefactor in the evening instead of the morning would mean; especially as man is shut up in life as in a prison from which there is no egress or escape, and though doubtless during his life he has much feasting and business and gifts and favours and amusement, yet, just like people playing at dice or draughts in a prison, the rope is all the time hanging over his head.”
x. “And indeed what prevents our asserting that people in prison under sentence of death are not punished till their heads are cut off, or that the person who has taken hemlock, and walks about till he feels it is getting into his legs, suffers not at all till he is deprived of sensation by the freezing and curdling of his blood, if we consider the last moment of punishment all the punishment, and ignore all the intermediate sufferings and fears and anxiety and remorse, the destiny of every guilty wretch? That would be arguing that the fish that has swallowed the hook is not caught, till we see it boiled by the cook or sliced at table. For every wrong-doer is liable to punishment, and soon swallows the pleasantness of his wrong-doing like a bait, while his conscience still vexes and troubles him,

“As through the sea the impetuous tunny darts.”

For the recklessness and audacity of vice is strong and rampant till the crime is committed, but afterwards, when the passion subsides like a storm, it becomes timid and dejected and a prey to fears and superstitions…
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xi. “And so, if nothing happens to the soul after death, but that event is the end of all enjoyment or punishment, one would be rather inclined to say that the deity was lax and indulgent in quickly punishing the wicked and depriving them of life. For even if we were to say that the wicked had no other trouble in a long life, yet, when their wrong-doing was proved to bring them no profit or enjoyment, no good or adequate return for their many and great anxieties, the consciousness of that would be quite enough to throw their mind off its balance. So they record of Lysimachus that he was so overcome by thirst that he surrendered himself and his forces to the Getæ for some drink, but after he had drunk and bethought him that he was now a captive, he said, “Alas! How guilty am I for so brief a gratification to lose so great a kingdom!” And yet it is very difficult to resist a necessity of nature. But when a man, either for the love of money, or for political place or power, or carried away by some amorous propensity, does some lawless and dreadful deed, and, after his eager desire is satisfied, sees in process of time that only the base and terrible elements of his crime remain, while nothing useful, or necessary, or advantageous has flowed from it, is it not likely that the idea would often present itself to him that, moved by vain-glory, or for some illiberal and unlovely pleasure, he had violated the greatest and noblest rights of mankind, and had filled his life with shame and trouble? For as Simonides used to say playfully that he always found his money-chest full but his gratitude-chest empty, so the wicked contemplating their own vice soon find out that their gratification is joyless and hopeless, and ever attended by fears and griefs and gloomy memories, and suspicions about the future, and distrust about the present. Thus we hear Ino, repenting for what she had done, saying on the stage,

“Dear women, would that I could now inhabit
For the first time the house of Athamas,
Guiltless of any of my awful deeds!”

It is likely that the soul of every wicked person will meditate in this way, and consider how it can escape the memory of its ill-deeds, and lay its conscience to sleep, and become pure, and live another life over again from the beginning. For there is no confidence, or reality, or continuance, or security, in what wickedness proposes to itself, unless by Zeus we shall say that evil-doers are wise, but wherever the greedy love of wealth or pleasure or violent envy dwells with hatred and malignity, there will you also see and find stationed superstition, and remissness for labour, and cowardice in respect to death, and sudden caprice in the passions, and vain-glory and boasting…
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… For my part, if it is lawful to say so, I do not think evil-doers need any god or man to punish them, for the marring and troubling of all their life by vice is in itself adequate punishment.”
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xix. Bion says the deity in punishing the children of the wicked for their fathers’ crimes is more ridiculous than a doctor administering a potion to a son or grandson for a father’s or grandfather’s disease. But the cases, though in some respects similar and like, are in others dissimilar. For to cure one person of a disease does not cure another, nor is one any better, when suffering from ophthalmia or fever, by seeing another anointed or poulticed. But the punishments of evil-doers are exhibited to everybody for this reason, that it is the function of justice, when it is carried out as reason dictates, to check some by the punishment of others…
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xxi. Just now we were dissatisfied that the wicked were punished late and tardily, whereas at present we find fault with the deity for correcting the character and disposition of same before they commit crime, from our ignoring that the future deed may be worse and more dreadful than the past, and the hidden intention than the overt act; for we are not able fully to understand the reasons why it is better to leave some alone in their ill deeds, and to arrest others in the intention; just as no doubt medicine is not appropriate in the case of some patients, which would be beneficial to others not ill, but yet perhaps in a more dangerous condition still. And so the gods do not visit all the offences of parents on their children, but if a good man is the son of a bad one, as the son of a sickly parent is sometimes of a good constitution, he is exempt from the punishment of his race, as not being a participator in its viciousness. But if a young man imitates his vicious race it is only right that he should inherit the punishment of their ill deeds, as he would their debts. For Antigonus was not punished for Demetrius, nor, of the old heroes, Phyleus for Augeas, or Nestor for Neleus, for though their sires were bad they were good, but those whose nature liked and approved the vices of their ancestors, these justice punished, taking vengeance on their similarity in viciousness…
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PLUTARCH – MORALIA

CONSOLATION TO APOLLONIUS
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3: The pain and pang felt at the death of a son has in itself good cause to awaken grief, which is only natural, and over it we have no control. For I, for my part, cannot concur with those who extol that harsh and callous indifference, which is both impossible and unprofitable. For this will rob us of the kindly feeling which comes from mutual affection and which above all else we must conserve. But to be carried beyond all bounds and to help in exaggerating our griefs I say is contrary to nature, and results from our depraved ideas. Therefore this also must be dismissed as injurious and depraved and most unbecoming to right-minded men, but a moderate indulgence is not to be disapproved. “Pray that we be not ill,” says Crantor of the Academy, “but if we be ill, pray that sensation be left us, whether one of our members be cut off or torn out.” For this insensibility to pain is attained by man only at a great price; for in the former case, we may suppose, it is the body which has been brutalized into such insensibility, but in the latter case the soul.
4: Reason therefore requires that men of understanding should be neither indifferent in such calamities nor extravagantly affected; for the one course is unfeeling and brutal, the other lax and effeminate. Sensible is he who keeps within appropriate bounds and is able to bear judiciously both the agreeable and the grievous in his lot, and who has made up his mind beforehand to conform uncomplainingly and obediently to the dispensation of things…
Among the felicitous utterances the following piece of advice is to the point:

Let no success be so unusual
That it excite in you too great a pride,
Nor abject be in turn, if ill betide;
But ever be the same; preserve unchanged
Your nature, like to gold when tried by fire.

It is the mark of educated and disciplined men to keep the same habit of mind toward seeming prosperity, and nobly to maintain a becoming attitude toward adversity. For it is the task of rational prudence, either to be on guard against evil as it approaches, or, if it have already happened, to rectify it or to minimize it or to provide oneself with a virile and noble patience to endure it. For wisdom deals also with the good, in a fourfold way — either acquiring a store of goods, or conserving them, or adding to them, or using them judiciously. These are the laws of wisdom and of the other virtues, and they must be followed for better fortune or for worse. For

No man exists who’s blest in everything,

and truly

What thou must do cannot be made “must not.”

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12: Socrates said that death resembles either a very deep sleep or a long and distant journey, or, thirdly, a sort of destruction and extinction of both the body and the soul, but that by no one of these possibilities is it an evil. Each of these conceptions he pursued further, and the first one first. For if death is a sleep, and there is nothing evil in the state of those who sleep, it is evident that there is likewise nothing evil in the state of those who are dead. Nay, what need is there even to state that the deepest sleep is indeed the sweetest? For the fact is of itself patent to all men, and Homer bears witness by saying regarding it:

Slumber the deepest and sweetest, and nearest to death in its semblance.

In another place also he says:

Here she chanced to encounter the brother of Death, which is Slumber,

and

Slumber and Death, the twin brothers,

thereby indicating this similarity in appearance, for twins show most similarity. And again somewhere he says that death is a “brazen sleep,” in allusion to our insensibility in it. And not inelegantly did the man seem to put the case who called “sleep the Lesser Mysteries of death”; for sleep is really a preparatory rite for death. Very wise was the remark of the cynic Diogenes, who, when he had sunk into slumber and was about to depart this life, was roused by his physician, who inquired if anything distressed him, “Nothing,” he said, “for the one brother merely forestalls the other.”
13: If death indeed resembles a journey, even so it is not an evil. On the contrary, it may even be a good. For to pass one’s time unenslaved by the flesh and its emotions, by which the mind is distracted and tainted with human folly, would be a blessed piece of good fortune. “For the body,” says Plato, “in countless ways leaves us no leisure because of its necessary care and feeding. Moreover, if any diseases invade it, they hinder our pursuit of reality, and it fills us with lusts and desires and fears and all manner of fancies and folly, so that, as the saying goes, because of it we really have no opportunity to think seriously of anything. It is a fact that wars and strifes and battles are brought about by nothing else except the body and its desires; for all wars are waged for the acquisition of property, and property we are forced to acquire because of the body, since we are slaves in its service; and the result is that, because of these things, we have no leisure for study. And the worst of all is, that even if we do gain some leisure from the demands of the body, and turn to the consideration of some subject, yet at every point in our investigation the body forces itself in, and causes tumult and confusion, and disconcerts us, so that on account of it we are unable to discern the truth. Nay, the fact has been thoroughly demonstrated to us that, if we are ever going to have any pure knowledge, we must divest ourselves of the body, and with the soul itself observe the realities. And, as it appears, we shall possess what we desire and what we profess to long for — and that is wisdom — only, as our reasoning shows, after we are dead, but not while we are alive. For if it is impossible in company with the body to have any pure knowledge, then one of two things is true: either it is not possible to attain knowledge anywhere, or else only after death. For then the soul will be quite by itself, separate from the body, but before that time never. And so, while we live, we shall, as it appears, be nearest to knowledge if, as far as possible, we have no association or communion with the body, except such as absolute necessity requires, and if we do not taint ourselves with its nature, but keep ourselves pure of it until such time as God himself shall release us. And thus, being rid of the irrationality of the body, we shall, in all likelihood, be in the company of others in like state, and we shall behold with our own eyes the pure and absolute, which is the truth; since for the impure to touch the pure may well be against the divine ordinance.”
So, even if it be likely that death transports us into another place, it is not an evil; for it may possibly prove to be a good, as Plato has shown. Wherefore very wonderful were the words which Socrates uttered before his judges, to this effect: “To be afraid of death, Sirs, is nothing else than to seem to be wise when one is not; for it is to seem to know what one does not know. For in regard to death nobody knows even whether it happens to be for mankind the greatest of all good things, yet they fear it as if they knew well that it is the greatest of evils.” From this view it seems that the poet does not dissent who says:

Let none fear death, which is release from toils,

— ay, and from the greatest of evils as well.
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15: If, however, death is really a complete destruction and dissolution of both body and soul (for this was the third of Socrates’ conjectures), even so it is not an evil. For, according to him, there ensues a sort of insensibility and a liberation from all pain and anxiety. For just as no good can attach to us in such a state, so also can no evil; for just as the good, from its nature, can exist only in the case of that which is and has substantiality, so it is also with the evil. But in the case of that which is not, but has been removed from the sphere of being, neither of them can have any real existence. Now those who have died return to the same state in which they were before birth; therefore, as nothing was either good or evil for us before birth, even so will it be with us after death. And just as all events before our lifetime were nothing to us, even so will all events subsequent to our lifetime be nothing to us. For in reality

No suffering affects the dead,

since

Not to be born I count the same as death.

For the condition after the end of life is the same as that before birth. But do you imagine that there is a difference between not being born at all, and being born and then passing away? Surely not, unless you assume also that there is a difference in a house or a garment of ours after its destruction, as compared with the time when it had not yet been fashioned. If there is no difference in the case of death, either, as compared with the condition before birth. Arcesilaus puts the matter neatly: “This that we call an evil, death, is the only one of the supposed evils which, when present, has never caused anybody any pain, but causes pain when it is not present but merely expected.” As a matter of fact, many people, because of their utter fatuity and their false opinion regarding death, die in their effort to keep from dying. Excellently does Epicharmus put it:

To be and not to be hath been his fate;

once more

Gone is he whence he came, earth back to earth,
The soul on high. What here is evil? Naught.

Cresphontes in some play of Euripides, speaking of Heracles, says:

For if he dwells beneath the depths of earth
‘Mid lifeless shades, his vigour would be naught.

This you might rewrite and say,

For if he dwells beneath the depths of earth
‘Mid lifeless shades, his dolour would be naught.

Noble also is the Spartan song:

Here now are we; before us others throve, and others still straightway,
But we shall never live to see their day;

and again:

Those who have died and who counted no honour the living or dying,
Only to consummate both nobly were honour for them.

Excellently does Euripides say of those who patiently endure long illnesses:

I hate the men who would prolong their lives
By foods and drinks and charms of magic art,
Perverting nature’s course to keep off death;
They ought, when they no longer serve the land,
To quit this life, and clear the way for youth.

And Merope stirs the theatres by expressing manly sentiments when she speaks the following words:

Not mine the only children who have died,
Nor I the only woman robbed of spouse;
Others as well as I have drunk life’s dregs.

With this the following might be appropriately combined:

Where now are all those things magnificent —
Great Croesus, lord of Lydia? Xerxes, too,
Who yoked the sullen neck of Hellespont?
Gone all to Hades and Oblivion’s house,

and their wealth perished with their bodies.
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17: In general everyone ought to hold the conviction, if he seriously reviews the facts both by himself and in the company of another, that not the longest life is the best, but the most efficient. For it is not the man who has played the lyre the most, or made the most speeches, or piloted the most ships, who is commended, but he who has done these things excellently. Excellence is not to be ascribed to length of time, but to worth and timely fitness. For these have come to be regarded as tokens of good fortune and of divine favour. It is for this reason, at any rate, that the poets have traditionally represented those of the heroes who were pre-eminent and sprung from the gods as quitting this life before old age, like him

Who to the heart of great Zeus and Apollo was held to be dearest,
Loved with exceeding great love; but of eld he reached not the threshold.

For we everywhere observe that it is a happy use of opportunity, rather than a happy old age, that wins the highest place. For of trees and plants the best are those that in a brief time produce the most crops of fruit, and the best of animals are those from which in no long time we have the greatest service toward our livelihood. The terms “long” and “short” obviously appear to lose their difference if we fix our gaze on eternity. For a thousand or ten thousand years, according to Simonides, are but a vague second of time, or rather the smallest fraction of a second. Take the case of those creatures which they relate exist on the shores of the Black Sea, and have an existence of only one day, being born in the morning, reaching the prime of life at mid-day, and toward evening growing old and ending their existence; would there not be in those creatures this same feeling which prevails in us, if each of them had within him a human soul and power to reason, and would not the same relative conditions obviously obtain there, so that those who departed this life before mid-day would cause lamentation and tears, while those who lived through the day would be accounted altogether happy? The measure of life is its excellence, not its length in years.
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19: But do those who mourn for the untimely dead, mourn on their own account or on account of the departed? If on their own account, because they have been cut off from some gratification or profit or comfort in old age, which they might have expected from the dead, then is their excuse for grieving wholly selfish; for it will be plain that they mourn, not for them, but for their services. But if they mourn on account of the dead, then if they will fix their attention on the fact that the dead are in no evil state, they will rid themselves of grief by following that wise and ancient admonition to magnify the good and to minimize and lessen the evil. If, then, mourning is a good, we ought to enlarge and magnify it in every way. But if, as the truth is, we admit it to be an evil, we ought to minimize and reduce it, and as far as possible to efface it.
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25: Crantor says that not being to blame for one’s unhappy state is no small alleviation for misfortunes; but I should say that it surpasses all others as a remedy for the cure of grief. But affection and love for the departed does not consist in distressing ourselves, but in benefiting the beloved one; and a benefit for those who have been taken away is the honour paid to them through keeping their memory green. For no good man, after he is dead, is deserving of lamentations, but of hymns and songs of joy; not of mourning, but of an honourable memory; not of sorrowing tears, but of offerings of sacrifice, — if the departed one is now a partaker in some life more divine, relieved of servitude to the body, and of these everlasting cares and misfortunes which those who have received a mortal life as their portion are constrained to undergo until such time as they shall complete their allotted earthly existence, which Nature has not given us for eternity; but she has distributed to us severally the apportioned amount in accordance with the laws of fate.
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… We therefore resemble men who have forgotten, not merely, as Euripides says, that

Mortals are not the owners of their wealth,

but also that they do not own a single one of human possessions. Wherefore we must say in regard to all things that

We keep and care for that which is the gods’,
And when they will they take it back again.

We ought not, therefore, to bear it with bad grace if the gods make demand upon us for what they have loaned us for a short time. For even the bankers, as we are in the habit of saying frequently, when demand is made upon them for the return of deposits, do not chafe at the repayment, if they be honourable men. To those who do not make repayment with good grace one might fairly say, “Have you forgotten that you accepted this on condition that you should return it?’ Quite parallel is the lot of all mortals. For we hold our life, as it were, on deposit from the gods, who have compelled us to accept the account, and there is no fixed time for its return, just as with the bankers and their deposits, but it is uncertain when the depositor will demand payment. If a man, therefore, is exceedingly indignant, either when he himself is about to die, or when his children have died, must he not manifestly have forgotten that he is but human and the father of children who are mortal? For it is not characteristic of a man of sense to be unaware of the fact that man is a mortal creature, and that he is born to die…
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31: For who knows but that God, having a fatherly care for the human race, and foreseeing future events, early removes some persons from life untimely? Wherefore we must believe that they undergo nothing that should be avoided. (For

In what must be, there’s naught that men need dread,

nor in any of those events which come to pass in accordance with the postulates or the logical deductions of reason), both because the great majority of deaths forestall other and greater troubles and because it were better for some not to be born even, for others to die at the very moment of birth, for others after they have gone on in life a little way, and for still others while they are in their full vigour…
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PLUTARCH – MORALIA

WHETHER THE AFFECTIONS OF THE SOUL ARE WORSE THAN THOSE OF THE BODY
1: Homer, having contemplated the mortal varieties of animals and having compared them with each other in respect to their lives and habits, cried out that nothing is

More wretched than man,
Of all that breathes and creeps upon the earth,

awarding to man an unfortunate primacy in excess of evils. But as for us, as though acknowledging that man has won the victory in wretchedness and has been proclaimed the most miserable of animals, let us compare him with himself, dividing body and soul for competition of their individual miseries, a task not unprofitable but even quite necessary, to the end that we may learn whether it is through Fortune or through ourselves that we live more wretchedly. For while disease grows in the body through Nature, vice and depravity in the soul are first the soul’s own doing, and then its affliction. It will be no slight aid toward tranquillity of mind, if the worse condition be curable, being both lighter to bear and lacking intensity.
2: The fox in Aesop, disputing at law with the leopard concerning their claims to variety, when the leopard had shown her body with its glossy surface bright and spotted, and the fox’s tawny skin was rough and unpleasant to the eye,

“But look at me within, sir judge,” said she,
“And you will find me fuller far than she
Of fair variety,”

making manifest the versatility of her character which changes to many forms as necessity arises. Shall we, then, say in our own case, “Many of your diseases and affections, O man, your body naturally produces of itself, and it receives also many that befall it from without; but if you lay yourself open on the inside, you will find a storehouse and treasury, as Democritus says, of all manner of evils and many abnormal states, which do not flow in from outside, but have, as it were, subterranean and earth-born springs, which Vice, being widely diffused and abundantly supplied with those abnormal states, causes to gush forth”? And if the diseases in the flesh are detected by the pulse and biliousness, and temperatures and sudden pains confirm their presence, but the evils in the soul escape the notice of most men, they are for this reason worse evils, since they also deprive the sufferer of any awareness of themselves. For although the reason, if sound, perceives the diseases which affect the body, yet, being itself afflicted with those of the soul, it can form no judgement of its own afflictions, for it is affected in the very part by which it judges; and, of the soul’s diseases, one must account as first and greatest ignorance, which causes Vice beyond hope of cure to abide with most men, to cling to them through life, and to die with them. For the beginning of the riddance of disease is awareness which leads the ailing part to the use of what will relieve it; but the man who through disbelief in his ailment does not know what he needs, refuses the remedy, even if it be at hand. For it is true of the diseases of the body also that those are worse which are attended by inability to perceive the body’s condition: lethargies, migraine, epilepsies, apoplexies, and those very fevers which, raising inflammation to the pitch of delirium and confounding consciousness, as on a musical instrument,

Will touch the heart-strings never touched before.

3: Therefore professional physicians desire, in the first place that a man should not be ill; and next, if he is ill, that he should not be unaware that he is ill — which is the case with all the maladies which affect the soul. For when men act foolishly or licentiously or unjustly, they do not think that they are doing wrong, but some even think that they are doing right. For although no one has ever called a fever “health,” nor consumption “excellent condition,” nor gout “swiftness of foot,” nor sallowness a “fresh complexion,” yet many call hot temper “manliness,” and love “friendship,” and envy “emulation,” and cowardice “caution.” Again, while men sick in body send for a doctor, since they perceive whom they need to counteract their ailments, yet those that are sick in soul avoid philosophers, for they think that they are doing well in those very matters where they are at fault. The fact is that, if we follow on this line of reasoning, we maintain that defective eyesight is easier to bear than madness, and gout than inflammation of the brain! For a man that is sick in body perceives it and calls loudly for a physician, and when he comes, allows him to anoint the eyes or open the veins; but you hear the maddened Agavê say, not recognizing her dearest by reason of her affliction:

From the mountain we bring
To the palace a fresh-cut tendril,
A fortunate capture.

It is true that one who is sick in body gives in at once and goes to bed and remains quiet while he is being cured, and if, perchance, when the fever comes upon him, he tosses a bit and tumbles his body about, one of those who sit by him will say to him gently,

Lie still, poor wretch, and move not from your bed,

and so checks and restrains him; but those who suffer from diseases of the soul are then most active, then least at rest. For impulses are the beginning of action, and the soul’s abnormal states are violent impulses. That is the reason why they do not allow the soul to be at rest, but just at the time when man most needs repose and silence and relaxation, then his fits of temper, of contentiousness, of love, or grief, drag him into the open air and strip him bare, and he is forced both to do many lawless things and to give tongue to many things unsuited to the occasion.
4: As, therefore, the storm that prevents a sailor from putting into port is more dangerous than that which does not allow him to sail, so those storms of the soul are more serious which do not allow a man to compose or to calm his disturbed reason; but pilotless and without ballast, in confusion and aimless wandering, rushing headlong in oblique and reeling courses, he suffers a terrible shipwreck, as it were, and ruins his life. Consequently for this reason also it is worse to be sick in soul than in body; for men afflicted in body only suffer, but those afflicted in soul both suffer and do ill.
But why need I recount the multitude of the soul’s maladies? The present occasion of itself brings them to mind…
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PLUTARCH – MORALIA

ON SUPERSTITION
1: Ignorance and blindness in regard to the gods divides itself at the very beginning into two streams, of which the one produces in hardened characters, as it were in stubborn soils, atheism, and the other in tender characters, as in moist soils, produces superstition. Every false judgement, and especially concerning these matters, is a mischievous thing; but where emotion also enters, it is most mischievous. For every emotion is likely to be a delusion that rankles; and just as dislocations of the joints accompanied by lacerations are hardest to deal with, so also is it with derangements of the soul accompanied by emotion.
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… This falsehood contains venom, it feeds upon his soul, distracts him, does not allow him to sleep, fills him with stinging desires, pushes him over precipices, chokes him, and takes from him his freedom of speech.
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2: To come now to our subject: atheism, which is a sorry judgement that there is nothing blessed or incorruptible, seems, by disbelief in the Divinity, to lead finally to a kind of utter indifference, and the end which it achieves in not believing in the existence of gods is not to fear them. But, on the other hand, superstition, as the very name (dread of deities) indicates, is an emotional idea and an assumption productive of a fear which utterly humbles and crushes a man, for he thinks that there are gods, but that they are the cause of pain and injury. In fact, the atheist, apparently, is unmoved regarding the Divinity, whereas the superstitious man is moved as he ought not to be, and his mind is thus perverted. For in the one man ignorance engenders disbelief in the one who can help him, and on the other it bestows the added idea that He causes injury. Whence it follows that atheism is falsified reason, and superstition is an emotion engendered from false reason.
3: Clear it is that all distempers and emotions of the soul are disgraceful, but in some of them are to be found pride, loftiness, and exaltation, owing to their uplifting power; and no one of them, we might say, is destitute of an impulse to activity. But this general complaint may be made against every one of the emotions, that by their urgings to be up and doing they press hard upon the reasoning power and strain it. But fear alone, lacking no less in boldness than in power to reason, keeps its irrationality impotent, helpless, and hopeless. It is on this ground that the power of fear to tie down the soul, and at the same time to keep it awake, has come to be named both terror and awe.
Of all kinds of fear the most impotent and helpless is superstitious fear. No fear of the sea has he who does not sail upon it, nor of war he who does not serve in the army, nor of highwaymen he who stays at home, nor of a blackmailer he who is poor, nor of envy he who holds no office, nor of earthquake he who is in Gaul, nor of the lightning-stroke he who is in Ethiopia; but he who fears the gods fears all things, earth and sea, air and sky, darkness and light, sound and silence, and a dream. Slaves in their sleep forget their masters, sleep makes light the chains of prisoners, and the inflammations surrounding wounds, the savage gnawing of ulcers in the flesh, and tormenting pains are removed from those who are fallen asleep:

Dear soothing balm of sleep to help my ill,
How sweet thy coming in mine hour of need.

Superstition does not give one a right to say this; for superstition alone makes no truce with sleep, and never gives the soul a chance to recover its breath and courage by putting aside its bitter and despondent notions regarding God; but, as it were in the place of torment of the impious, so in the sleep of the superstitious their malady calls up fearful images, and horrible apparitions and divers forms of punishment, and, by keeping the unhappy soul on the rack, chases it away from sleep by its dreams, lashed and punished by its own self as if by another, and forced to comply with dreadful and extraordinary behests. When, later, such persons arise from their beds, they do not contemn nor ridicule these things, nor realize that not one of the things that agitated them was really true, but, trying to escape the shadow of a delusion that has nothing bad at the bottom, during their waking hours they delude and waste and agitate themselves, putting themselves into the hands of conjurors and impostors who say to them:

If a vision in sleep is the cause of your fear
And the troop of dire Hecate felt to be near,

then call in the old crone who performs magic purifications, dip yourself in the ocean, and sit down on the ground and spend the whole day there.

Greeks from barbarians finding evil ways!

because of superstition, such as smearing with mud, wallowing in filth, immersions, casting oneself down with face to the ground, disgraceful besieging of the gods, and uncouth prostrations…
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4: A despot much feared in Samos was Polycrates, as was Periander in Corinth, but nobody feared these men after he had removed to a free State governed by its own people. But as for the man who fears the rule of the gods as a sullen and inexorable despotism, where can he remove himself, where can he flee, what country can he find without gods, or what sea? Into what part of the universe shall you steal away and hide yourself, poor wretch, and believe that you have escaped God? There is a law even for slaves who have given up all hope of freedom, that they may demand a sale, and thus exchange their present master for one more mild. But superstition grants no such exchange; and to find a god whom he shall not fear is impossible for him who fears the gods of his fathers and his kin, who shudders at his saviours, and trembles with terror at those gentle gods from whom we ask wealth, welfare, peace, concord, and success in our best efforts in speech and action. Then again these same persons hold slavery to be a misfortune, and say,

For man or woman ’tis disaster dire
Sudden to be enslaved, and masters harsh
To get.

But how much more dire, think you, is the lot of those for whom there is no escape, no running away, no chance to revolt? For a slave there is an altar to which he can flee, and there are many of our shrines where even robbers may find sanctuary, and men who are fleeing from the enemy, if once they lay hold upon a statue of a god, or a temple, take courage again. These are the very things that most inspire a shuddering fear and dread in the superstitious man, and yet it is in them that those who in fear of the most dreadful fate place their hopes…
What need to speak at length? “In death is the end of life for all men,” but not the end of superstition; for superstition transcends the limits of life into the far beyond, making fear to endure longer than life, and connecting with death the thought of undying evils, and holding fast to the opinion, at the moment of ceasing from trouble, that now is the beginning of those that never cease. The abysmal gates of the nether world swing open, rivers of fire and offshoots of the Styx are mingled together, darkness is crowded with spectres of many fantastic shapes which beset their victim with grim visages and piteous voices, and, besides these, judges and torturers and yawning gulfs and deep recesses teeming with unnumbered woes. Thus unhappy superstition, by its excess of caution in trying to avoid everything suggestive of dread, unwittingly subjects itself to every sort of dread.
5: Nothing of this kind attaches to atheism, but its ignorance is distressing, and to see amiss or not to see at all in matters of such importance is a great misfortune for the soul; for it is as if the soul had suffered the extinction of the brightest and most dominant of its many eyes, the conception of God. But superstition is attended by emotion, as has already been said, and by sore distress and disturbance and mental enslavement from the very beginning. Plato says that music, the creator of harmony and order, was given to mankind by the gods not for the sake of pampering them or tickling their ears, but so that whatever in a man’s body is disturbing and errant, affecting the cycles and concords of the soul, and in many instances, for lack of culture and refinement, waxing wanton because of licentiousness and error, music should, in its own way, disengage and bring round and restore to its proper place again.

Whatsoever things there be
Which by Zeus are not held dear,

says Pindar,

In affrighted panic flee
When the Muses’ voice they hear.

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6: What then? Does it not seem to you that the feeling of the atheists compared with the superstitious presents just such a difference? The former do not see the gods at all, the latter think that they do exist and are evil. The former disregard them, the latter conceive their kindliness to be frightful, their fatherly solicitude to be despotic, their loving care to be injurious, their slowness to anger to be savage and brutal. Then again such persons give credence to workers in metal, stone, or wax, who make their images of gods in the likeness of human beings, and they have such images fashioned, and dress them up, and worship them. But they hold in contempt philosophers and statesmen, who try to prove that the majesty of God is associated with goodness, magnanimity, kindliness, and solicitude. So the atheists have more than enough of indifference and distrust of the Beings who can help them, whereas the superstitious experience equal agitation and fear towards the things that can help them. Or, in fine, atheism is an indifferent feeling toward the Deity, which has no notion of the good, and superstition is a multitude of differing feelings with an underlying notion that the good is evil. For the superstitious fear the gods, and flee to the gods for help; they flatter them and assail them with abuse, pray to them and blame them. It is the common lot of mankind not to enjoy continual good fortune in all things.

Age and illness not their lot,
Toil and labour they know not,
‘Scaped is Acheron’s loud strait,

says Pindar of the gods, but human experiences and actions are linked with chance circumstances which move now in one course and now in another.
7: Come now, observe the atheist in circumstances not desired by him, and take note of his attitude. If he be moderate in general, you will note that he takes his present fortune without a word, and tries to procure for himself means of help and comfort; but if he be given to impatience or violent emotion, you will note that he directs all his complaints against Fortune and Chance, and exclaims that nothing comes about according to right or as the result of providence, but that the course of all human affairs is confusion and disorder, and that they are all being turned topsy-turvy. This, however, is not the way of the superstitious man; but if even the slightest ill befall him, he sits down and proceeds to construct, on the basis of his trouble, a fabric of harsh, momentous, and practically unavoidable experiences which he must undergo, and he also loads himself with fears and frights, suspicions and trepidations, and all this he bitterly assails with every sort of lamentation and moaning. For he puts the responsibility for his lot upon no man nor upon Fortune nor upon occasion nor upon himself, but lays the responsibility for everything upon God, and says that from that source a heaven-sent stream of mischief has come upon him with full force; and he imagines that it is not because he is unlucky, but because he is hateful to the gods, that he is being punished by the gods, and that the penalty he pays and all that he is undergoing are deserved because of his own conduct.
The atheist, when he is ill, takes into account and calls to mind the times when he has eaten too much or drunk too much wine, also irregularities in his daily life, or instances of over-fatigue or unaccustomed changes of air or locality; and again when he has given offence in administering office, and has encountered disrepute with the masses or calumny with a ruler, he looks to find the reason in himself and his own surroundings:

Where did I err, and what have I done? What duty of mine was neglected?

But in the estimation of the superstitious man, every indisposition of his body, loss of property, deaths of children, or mishaps and failures in public life are classed as “afflictions of God” or “attacks of an evil spirit.” For this reason he has no heart to relieve the situation or undo its effects, or to find some remedy for it or to take a strong stand against it, lest he seem to fight against God and to rebel at his punishment; but when he is ill the physician is ejected from the house, and when he is in grief the door is shut on the philosopher who would advise and comfort him. “Oh, sir,” he says, “leave me to pay my penalty, impious wretch that I am, accursed, and hateful to the gods and all the heavenly host.”
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8: Tiribazus, they say, when an attempt was made by the Persians to arrest him, drew his sword, being a man of great strength, and fought desperately. But when the men protested and cried out that they were arresting him by the King’s command, he instantly threw down his sword and held out his hands to be bound. Is not what actually happens just like this? The rest of men fight desperately against misfortunes, and force their way through difficulties, contriving for themselves means to escape and avert things undesired; but the superstitious man, without a word from anybody, says all to himself, “This you have to undergo, poor soul, by the dispensation of Providence and by God’s command,” and casts away all hope, gives himself up, runs away, and repulses those who would help him.
Many ills of no great moment are made to result fatally by men’s superstition… For the obstruction of light caused by the earth’s coming between sun and moon is nothing frightful, nor is the meeting of a shadow with the moon at the proper time in its revolutions anything frightful, but frightful is the darkness of superstition falling upon man, and confounding and blinding his power to reason in circumstances that most loudly demand the power to reason.
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… for God is brave hope, not cowardly excuse…
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10: Hence it occurs to me to wonder at those who say that atheism is impiety, and do not say the same of superstition. Yet Anaxagoras was brought to trial for impiety on the ground that he had said the sun is a stone; but nobody has called the Cimmerians impious because they do not believe even in the existence of the sun at all. What say you? The man who does not believe in the existence of the gods is unholy? And is not he who believes in such gods as the superstitious believe in a partner to opinions far more unholy? Why, for my part, I should prefer that men should say about me that I have never been born at all, and there is no Plutarch, rather than that they should say “Plutarch is an inconstant fickle person, quick-tempered, vindictive over little accidents, pained at trifles. If you invite others to dinner and leave him out, or if you haven’t the time and don’t go to call on him, or fail to speak to him when you see him, he will set his teeth into your body and bite it through, or he will get hold of your little child and beat him to death, or he will turn the beast that he owns into your crops and spoil your harvest.”
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11: Is it, then, an unholy thing to speak meanly of the gods, but not unholy to have a mean opinion of them? Or does the opinion of him who speaks malignly make his utterance improper? It is a fact that we hold up malign speaking as a sign of animosity, and those who speak ill of us we regard as enemies, since we feel that they must also think ill of us. You see what kind of thoughts the superstitious have about the gods; they assume that the gods are rash, faithless, fickle, vengeful, cruel, and easily offended; and, as a result, the superstitious man is bound to hate and fear the gods. Why not, since he thinks that the worst of his ills are due to them, and will be due to them in the future? As he hates and fears the gods, he is an enemy to them. And yet, though he dreads them, he worships them and sacrifices to them and besieges their shrines; and this is nothing surprising; for it is equally true that men give welcome to despots, and pay court to them, and erect golden statues in their honour, but in their hearts they hate them and “shake their head.” Hermolaüs attended upon Alexander, Pausanias served as bodyguard for Philip, and Chaerea or Gaius Caligula, yet each one of these must have said as he followed along:

Verily I would have vengeance if only my strength were sufficient.

The atheist thinks there are no gods; the superstitious man wishes there were none, but believes in them against his will; for he is afraid not to believe. And yet, as Tantalus would be glad indeed to get out from under the rock suspended above his head, so the superstitious man would be glad to escape his fear by which he feels oppressed no less than Tantalus by his rock, and he would call the condition of the atheist happy because it is a state of freedom. But, as things are, the atheist has neither part nor lot in superstition, whereas the superstitious man by preference would be an atheist, but is too weak to hold the opinion about the gods which he wishes to hold.
12: Moreover, the atheist has no part in causing superstition, but superstition provides the seed from which atheism springs, and when atheism has taken root, superstition supplies it with a defence, not a true one or a fair one, but one not destitute of some speciousness. For it is not because these people saw in the heavens anything to find fault with, or anything not harmonious or well-ordered in the stars or seasons, or in the revolutions of the moon or in the movements of the sun around the earth, “artisans of day and night,” or in the feeding and growth of living creatures, or in the sowing and harvesting of crops, as the result of which they decided against the idea of a God in the universe; but the ridiculous actions and emotions of superstition, its words and gestures, magic charms and spells, rushing about and beating of drums, impure purifications and dirty sanctifications, barbarous and outlandish penances and mortifications at the shrines — all these give occasion to some to say that it were better there should be no gods at all than gods who accept with pleasure such forms of worship, and are so overbearing, so petty, and so easily offended.
13: Would it not then have been better for those Gauls and Scythians to have had absolutely no conception, no vision, no tradition, regarding the gods, than to believe in the existence of gods who take delight in the blood of human sacrifice and hold this to be the most perfect offering and holy rite?…
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… Xenophanes, the natural philosopher, seeing the Egyptians beating their breasts and wailing at their festivals, gave them a very proper suggestion: “If these beings are gods,” said he, “do not bewail them; and if they are men, do not offer sacrifices to them.”
14: But there is no infirmity comprehending such a multitude of errors and emotions, and involving opinions so contradictory, or rather antagonistic, as that of superstition. We must try, therefore, to escape it in some way which is both safe and expedient, and not be like people who incautiously and blindly run hither and thither to escape from an attack of robbers or wild beasts, or from a fire, and rush into trackless places that contain pitfalls and precipices. For thus it is that some persons, in trying to escape superstition, rush into a rough and hardened atheism, thus overleaping true religion which lies between.

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

Plutarch. Moralia. Vol. I of Loeb Classical Library edition. Translated by F. C. Babbitt. 1927. Bill Thayer’s Website, Lacuscurtius. Retrieved 2025, from
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Quomodo_adolescens*.html

HOW THE YOUNG MAN SHOULD STUDY POETRY
1: If, my dear Marcus Sedatus, it is true, as the poet Philoxenus used to say, that of meats those that are not meat, and of fish those that are not fish, have the best flavour, let us leave the expounding of this matter to those persons of whom Cato said that their palates are more sensitive than their minds. And so of philosophical discourses it is clear to us that those seemingly not at all philosophical, or even serious, are found more enjoyable by the very young, who present themselves at such lectures as willing and submissive hearers.
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For the element of deception in it does not gain any hold on utterly witless and foolish persons. This is the ground of Simonides’ answer to the man who said to him, “Why are the Thessalians the only people whom you do not deceive?” His answer was, “Oh, they are too ignorant to be deceived by me”…
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2: First of all, then, the young man should be introduced into poetry with nothing in his mind so well imprinted, or so ready at hand, as the saying, “Many the lies the poets tell,” some intentionally and some unintentionally; intentionally, because for the purpose of giving pleasure and gratification to the ear (and this is what most people look for in poetry) they feel that the truth is too stern in comparison with fiction. For the truth, because it is what actually happens, does not deviate from its course, even though the end be unpleasant; whereas fiction, being a verbal fabrication, very readily follows a roundabout route, and turns aside from the painful to what is more pleasant.
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… But when at another time, in his reading, he finds this line,

Zeus makes virtue in men both to increase and diminish,

or this,

Virtue and glory are attendant on riches,

let him not “sit” astounded and “amazed” at the rich, as though they were able to purchase virtue without ado for money, nor let him believe either that the increase or diminution of his own wisdom rests with Fortune, but let him consider that the poet has employed “virtue” instead of repute, or influence, or good fortune, or the like. For assuredly by “evil” the poets sometimes signify badness in the strict sense, and wickedness of soul, as when Hesiod says,

Evil may always be had by all mankind in abundance,
and sometimes some other affliction or misfortune, as when Homer says,
Since full soon do mortals who live in evil grow aged.

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For it is mark of a wondrous foresight for a man whose hold on his temper is uncertain, who is naturally rough and quick-tempered, not to be blind to his own weakness, but to exercise caution, notable on his guard against possible grounds for anger, and to forestall them by reason long beforehand, so that he may not even inadvertently become involved in such emotions…
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12: Now the bee, in accordance with nature’s laws, discovers amid the most pungent flowers and the roughest thorns the smoothest and most palatable honey; so children, if they be rightly nurtured amid poetry, will in some way or other learn to draw some wholesome and profitable doctrine even from passages that are suspect of what is base and improper…
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14: Moreover, just as in what we have said above we felt that by setting against cheap and harmful poems the sayings and maxims of statesmen and men of repute, we were inducing a revolt and revulsion of faith from such poetry, so whenever we find any edifying sentiment neatly expressed in the poets we ought to foster and amplify it by means of proofs and testimonies from the philosophers, at the same time crediting these with the discovery. For this is right and useful, and our faith gains an added strength and dignity whenever the doctrines of Pythagoras and of Plato are in agreement with what is spoken on the stage or sung to the lyre or studied at school, and when the precepts of Chilon and of Bias lead to the same conclusions as our children’s readings in poetry.
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Wherefore, both because of these considerations and because of those already adduced, the young man has need of good pilotage in the matter of reading, to the end that, forestalled with schooling rather than prejudice, in a spirit of friendship and goodwill and familiarity, he may be convoyed by poetry into the realm of philosophy.

PLUTARCH – ESSAYS

Plutarch. Essays and Miscellanies: The Complete Works Volume 3. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg, 2009. Retrieved 2025, from
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3052/3052-h/3052-h.htm

PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS
THAT IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO LIVE PLEASURABLY ACCORDING TO THE DOCTRINE OF EPICURUS. PLUTARCH, ZEUXIPPUS, THEON, ARISTODEMUS.
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… 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 an intelligent mind. But as at sea (according to Aeschylus)

Night to the ablest pilot trouble brings,

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 ephemeral creatures, uncertain and unfixed, and to liken our lives to leaves that both spring and fall in the lapse 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 a body at its utmost vigor will through delicacy very soon admit of changes.
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 being able to reach that firm and steadfast assurance which they expect. But to do no wickedness will contribute nothing to our assurance; for it is not suffering unjustly 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 make life perilous and uneasy, and that to the good as well as to the bad, if they have learned to set 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.
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 no more 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 consider 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 speak 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 more prudent 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 fullness 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.
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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 heavenly phenomena 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 opinion about things after death to disorder themselves with; nor have they as much as imagination or notion that there is anything 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…
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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 way 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 look for neither good nor harm. But if something more must 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 vainglory, 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 artificially 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 vainglory, 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, content, nor assurance in the enjoyment of our good things nor any recourse to God in our adversity and misfortunes.
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 witch 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 is the good hope, the 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 depressed, and heavy, as if she were approaching 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 joviality. 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 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.

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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; neither is it 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, 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 Distributor, and another the Mild, and a third the Averter of Evil. And according to Pindar,

Phoebus 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. As 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 everything will have, they signify it to me by sending angels, voices, dreams, and presages.”
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…
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SENTIMENTS CONCERNING NATURE WITH WHICH PHILOSOPHERS WERE DELIGHTED
BOOK I.
It being our determination to discourse of Natural Philosophy, we judge it necessary, in the first place and chiefly, to divide the body of philosophy into its proper members, so that we may know what is that which is called philosophy, and what part of it is physical, or the explanation of natural things. The Stoics affirm that wisdom is the knowledge of things human and divine; that philosophy is the pursuit of that art which is convenient to this knowledge; that virtue is the sole and sovereign art which is thus convenient; and this distributes itself into three general parts—natural, moral, and logical. By which just reason (they say) philosophy is tripartite; of which one natural, the other moral, the third logical. The natural when our inquiries are concerning the world and all things contained in it; the ethical is the employment of our minds in those things which concern the manners of man’s life; the logical (which they also call dialectical) regulates our conversation with others in speaking. Aristotle, Theophrastus, and after them almost all the Peripatetics give the same division of philosophy. It is absolutely requisite that the complete person he contemplator of things which have a being, and the practiser of those thing which are decent; and this easily appears by the following instances. If the question be proposed, whether the sun, which is so conspicuous to us, be informed of a soul or inanimate, he that makes this disquisition is the thinking man; for he proceeds no farther than to consider the nature of that thing which is proposed. Likewise, if the question be propounded, whether the world be infinite, or whether beyond the system of this world there is any real being, all these things are the objects about which the understanding of man is conversant.
But if these be the questions,—what measures must be taken to compose the well-ordered life of man, what are the best methods to govern and educate children, or what are the exact rules whereby sovereigns may command and establish laws,—all these queries are proposed for the sole end of action, and the man skilled therein is the moral and practical man.
CHAPTER I. WHAT IS NATURE?
Since we have undertaken to make a diligent search into Nature, I cannot but conclude it necessary to declare what Nature is. It is very absurd to attempt a discourse of the essence of natural things, and not to understand what is the power and sphere of Nature. If Aristotle be credited, Nature is the principle of motion and rest, in that thing in which it exists as a principle and not by accident. For all things that are conspicuous to our eyes, which are neither fortuitous nor necessary, nor have a divine original, nor acknowledge any such like cause, are called natural and enjoy their proper nature. Of this sort are earth, fire, water, air, plants, animals; to these may be added all things produced from them, such as showers, hail, thunders, hurricanes, and winds. All these confess they had a beginning, none of these were from eternity, but had something as the origin of them; and likewise animals and plants have a principle whence they are produced. But Nature, which in all these things hath the priority, is not only the principle of motion but of repose; whatsoever enjoys the principle of motion, the same has a possibility to find a dissolution. Therefore on this account it is that Nature is the principle of motion and rest.
CHAPTER VI. WHENCE DID MEN OBTAIN THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE EXISTENCE AND ESSENCE OF A DEITY?
The Stoics thus define the essence of a god. It is a spirit intellectual and fiery, which acknowledges no shape, but is continually changed into what it pleases, and assimilates itself to all things. The knowledge of this deity they first received from the pulchritude of those things which so visibly appeared to us; for they concluded that nothing beauteous could casually or fortuitously be formed, but that it was framed from the art of a great understanding that produced the world…
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CHAPTER VII. WHAT IS GOD?
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Democritus said that God, being a globe of fire, is the intelligence and the soul of the world.
Pythagoras says that, of his principles, unity is God; and the good, which is indeed the nature of a unity, is mind itself; but the binary number, which is infinite, is a daemon, and evil,—about which the multitude of material beings and this visible world are related.
Socrates and Plato agree that God is that which is one, hath its original from its own self, is of a singular subsistence, is one only being perfectly good; all these various names signifying goodness do all centre in mind; hence God is to be understood as that mind and intellect, which is a separate idea, that is to say, pure and unmixed of all matter, and not mingled with anything subject to passions.
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The Stoics affirm that God is a thing more common and obvious, and is a mechanic fire which every way spreads itself to produce the world; it contains in itself all seminal virtues, and by this means all things by a fatal necessity were produced. This spirit, passing through the whole world, received different names from the mutations in the matter through which it ran in its journey. God therefore is the world, the stars, the earth, and (highest of all) the mind in the heavens. In the judgment of Epicurus all the gods are anthropomorphites, or have the shape of men; but they are perceptible only by reason, for their nature admits of no other manner of being apprehended, their parts being so small and fine that they give no corporeal representations…
CHAPTER VIII. OF THOSE THAT ARE CALLED GENIUSES AND HEROES
Having treated of the essence of the deities in a just order, it follows that we discourse of daemons and heroes. Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, and the Stoics do conclude that daemons are essences endowed with souls; that the heroes are the souls separated from their bodies, some are good, some are bad; the good are those whose souls are good, the evil those whose souls are wicked. All this is rejected by Epicurus.

BOOK II.
CHAPTER IV. WHETHER THE WORLD IS ETERNAL AND INCORRUPTIBLE.
Pythagoras [and Plato], agreeing with the Stoics, affirm that the world was framed by God, and being corporeal is obvious to the senses, and in its own nature is obnoxious to destruction; but it shall never perish, it being preserved by the providence of God. Epicurus, that the world had a beginning, and so shall have an end, as plants and animals have. Xenophanes, that the world never had a beginning, is eternal and incorruptible. Aristotle, that the part of the world which is sublunary is subject to change, and there terrestrial beings find a decay.

BOOK IV.
Having taken a survey of the general parts of the world, I will take a view of the particular members of it.
CHAPTER II. OF THE SOUL.
Thales first pronounced that the soul is that being which is in a perpetual motion, or that whose motion proceeds from itself. Pythagoras, that it is a number moving itself; he takes a number to be the same thing with a mind. Plato, that it is an intellectual substance moving itself, and that motion is in a numerical harmony. Aristotle, that it is the first actuality [Greek ommitted] of a natural organical body which has life potentially; and this actuality must be understood to be the same thing with energy or operation. Dicaearchus, that it is the harmony of the four elements. Asclepiades the physician, that it is the concurrent exercitation of the senses.
CHAPTER V. WHAT IS THE PRINCIPAL PART OF THE SOUL, AND IN WHAT PART OF THE BODY IT RESIDES.
Plato and Democritus place its residence in the whole head. Strato, in that part of the forehead where the eyebrows are separated. Erasiatratus, in the Epikranis, or membrane which involves the brain. Herophilus, in that sinus of the brain which is the basis of it. Parmenides, in the breast; which opinion is embraced by Epicurus. The Stoics are generally of this opinion, that the seat of the soul is throughout the heart, or in the spirit about it. Diogenes, in the arterial ventricle of the heart, which is also full of vital spirit. Empedocles, in the mass of the blood. There are that say it is in the neck of the heart, others in the pericardium, others in the midriff. Certain of the Neoterics, that the seat of the soul is extended from the head to the diaphragm. Pythagoras, that the animal part of the soul resides in the heart, the intellectual in the head.
CHAPTER VI. OF THE MOTION OF THE SOUL.
Plato believes that the soul is in perpetual motion, but that it is immovable as regards motion from place to place. Aristotle, that the soul is not naturally moved, but its motion is accidental, resembling that which is in the forms of bodies.
CHAPTER VII. OF THE SOUL’S IMMORTALITY.
Plato and Pythagoras say that the soul is immortal; when it departs out of the body, it retreats to the soul of the world, which is a being of the same nature with it. The Stoics, when the souls leave the bodies, they are carried to divers places; the souls of the unlearned and ignorant descend to the coagmentation of earthly things, but the learned and vigorous last till the general fire. Epicurus and Democritus, the soul is mortal, and it perisheth with the body. Plato and Pythagoras, that part of the soul of man which is rational is eternal; for though it be not God, yet it is the product of an eternal deity; but that part of the soul which is divested of reason dies.
CHAPTER VIII. OF THE SENSES, AND OF THOSE THINGS WHICH ARE OBJECTS OF THE SENSES,
The Stoics give this definition of sense: Sense is the Apprehension or comprehension of an object by means of an organ of sensation. There are several ways of expressing what sense is; it is either a habit, a faculty, an operation, or an imagination which apprehends by means of an organ of sense,—and also the eighth principal thing, from whence the senses originate. The instruments of sense are intelligent exhalations, which from the said commanding part extend unto all the organs of the body. Epicurus, that sense is a faculty, and that which is perceived by the sense is the product of it; so that sense hath a double acceptation,—sense which is the faculty, and the thing received by the sense, which is the effect. Plato, that sense is that commerce which the soul and body have with those things that are exterior to them; the power of which is from the soul, the organ by which is from the body; but both of them apprehend external objects by means of the imagination. Leucippus and Democritus, that sense and intelligence arise from external images; so neither of them can operate without the assistance of image falling upon us.
CHAPTER IX. WHETHER WHAT APPEARS TO OUR SENSES AND IMAGINATIONS BE TRUE OR NOT.
The Stoics say that what the senses represent is true; what the imagination, is partly false, partly true. Epicurus that every impression of the sense or imagination is true, but of those things that fall under the head of opinion, some are true, some false: sense gives us a false presentation of those things only which are the objects of our understanding; but the imagination gives us a double error, both of things sensible and things intellectual. Empedocles and Heraclides, that the senses act by a just accommodation of the pores in every case; everything that is perceived by the sense being congruously adapted to its proper organ.
CHAPTER X. HOW MANY SENSES ARE THERE?
The Stoics say that there are five senses properly so called, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. Aristotle indeed doth not add a sixth sense; but he assigns a common sense, which is the judge of all compounded species; into this each sense casts its proper representation, in which is discovered a transition of one thing into another, like as we see in figure and motion where there is a change of one into another. Democritus, that there are divers species of senses, which appertain to beings destitute of reason, to the gods, and to wise men.
CHAPTER XI. HOW THE ACTIONS OF THE SENSES, THE CONCEPTIONS OF OUR MINDS, AND THE HABIT OF OUR REASON ARE FORMED.
The Stoics affirm that every man, as soon as he is born, has a principal and commanding part of his soul, which is in him like a sheet of writing-paper, to which he commits all his notions. The first manner of his inscribing is by denoting those notions which flow from the senses. Suppose it be of a thing that is white; when the present sense of it is vanished, there is yet retained the remembrance; when many memorative notions of the same similitude do concur, then he is said to have an experience; for experience is nothing more than the abundance of notions that are of the same form met together. Some of these notions are naturally begotten according to the aforesaid manner, without the assistance of art; the others are produced by discipline, learning, and industry; these only are justly called notions, the others are prenotions. But reason, which gives us the denomination of rational, is completed by prenotions in the first seven years. The conception of the mind is the vision that the intelligence of a rational animal hath received; when that vision falls upon the rational soul, then it is called the conception of the mind, for it hath derived its name from the mind [Greek omitted] from [Greek omitted]. Therefore these visions are not to be found in any other animals; they only are appropriated to gods and to us men. If these we consider generally, they are phantasms; if specifically, they are notions. As pence or staters, if you consider them according to their own value, are simply pence and staters; but if you give them as a price for a naval voyage, they are called not merely pence, etc., but your freight.
CHAPTER XII. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN IMAGINATION [GREEK OMITTED], THE IMAGINABLE [GREEK OMITTED], FANCY [GREEK OMITTED], AND PHANTOM [GREEK OMITTED]?
Chrysippus affirms, these four are different one from another. Imagination is that passion raised in the soul which discovers itself and that which was the efficient of it; to use example, after the eye hath looked upon a thing that is white, the sight of which produceth in the mind a certain impression, this gives us reason to conclude that the object of this impression is white, which affecteth us. So with touching and smelling Phantasy or imagination is denominated from [Greek omitted] which denotes light; for as light discovers itself and all other things which it illuminates, so this imagination discovers itself and that which is the cause of it. The imaginable is the efficient cause of imagination; as anything that is white, or anything that is cold, or everything that may make an impression upon the imagination. Fancy is a vain impulse upon the mind of man, proceeding from nothing which is really conceivable; this is experienced in those that whirl about their idle hand and fight with shadows; for to the imagination there is always some real imaginable thing presented, which is the efficient cause of it; but to the fancy nothing. A phantom is that to which we are brought by such a fanciful and vain attraction; this is to be seen in melancholy and distracted persons. Of this sort was Orestes in the tragedy, pronouncing these words:

Mother, these maids with horror me affright;
Oh bring them not, I pray, into my sight!
They’re smeared with blood, and cruel, dragon-like,
Skipping about with deadly fury strike.

These rave as frantic persons, they see nothing, and yet imagine they see. Thence Electra thus returns to him:

O wretched man, securely sleep in bed;
Nothing thou seest, thy fancy’s vainly led.

After the same manner Theoclymenus in Homer.
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CHAPTER XXI. BY WHAT MEANS THE SOUL IS SENSIBLE, AND WHAT IS THE PRINCIPAL AND COMMANDING PART OF IT.
The Stoics say that the highest part of the soul is the commanding part of it: this is the cause of sense, fancy, consents, and desires; and this we call the rational part. From this principal and commander there are produced seven parts of the soul, which are spread through the body, as the seven arms in a polypus. Of these seven parts, five are assigned to the senses, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. Sight is a spirit which is extended from the commanding part of the eyes; hearing is that spirit which from the principle reacheth to the ears; smelling a spirit drawn from the principal to the nostrils; tasting a spirit extended from the principle to the tongue; touching is a spirit which from the principal is drawn to the extremity of those bodies which are obnoxious to a sensible touch. Of the rest, the one called the spermatical is a spirit which reacheth from the principal to the generating vessels; the other, which is the vocal and termed the voice, is a spirit extended from the principal to the throat, tongue, and other proper organs of speaking. And this principal part itself hath that place in our spherical head which God hath in the world.
CHAPTER XXIII. OF THE PASSIONS OF THE BODY, AND WHETHER THE SOUL HATH A SYMPATHETICAL CONDOLENCY WITH IT.
The Stoics say that all the passions are seated in those parts of the body which are affected, the senses have their residence in the commanding part of the soul. Epicurus, that all the passions and all the senses are in those parts which are affected, but the commanding part is subject to no passion. Strato, that all the passions and senses of the soul are in the rational or commanding part of it, and are not fixed in those places which are affected; for in this place patience takes its residence, and this is apparent in terrible and dolorous things, as also in timorous and valiant individuals.

BOOK V
CHAPTER I. OF DIVINATION.
Plato and the Stoics introduce divination as a godlike enthusiasm, the soul itself being of a divine constitution, and this prophetic faculty being inspiration, or an illapse of the divine knowledge into man; and so likewise they account for interpretation by dreams. And these same allow many divisions of the art of divination. Xenophanes and Epicurus utterly refuse any such art of foretelling future contingencies. Pythagoras rejects all manner of divination which is by sacrifices. Aristotle and Dicaearchus admit only these two kinds of it, a fury by a divine inspiration, and dreams; they deny the immortality of the soul, yet they affirm that the mind of man hath a participation of something that is divine.

SYMPOSIACS.
BOOK VIII.
QUESTION I. CONCERNING THOSE DAYS IN WHICH SOME FAMOUS MEN WERE BORN; AND ALSO CONCERNING THE GENERATION OF THE GODS. DIOGENIANUS, PLUTARCH, FLORUS, TYNDARES.
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But, for my part, I am afraid to beget, as well as to be begotten, is repugnant to the incorruptibility of the deity. For that implies a change and passion; as Alexander imagined, when he said that he knew himself to be mortal as often as he lay with a woman or slept. For sleep is a relaxation of the body, occasioned by the weakness of our nature; and all generation is a corruptive parting with some of our own substance. But yet I take heart again, when I hear Plato call the eternal and unbegotten deity the father and maker of the world and all other begotten things; not as if he parted with any seed, but as if by his power he implanted a generative principle in matter, which acts upon, forms, and fashions it. Winds passing through… will on occasions impregnate her; and it seems no incredible thing, that the deity, though not after the fashion of a man, but by some other certain communication, fills a mortal creature with some divine conception…

COMMON CONCEPTIONS AGAINST THE STOICS.
LAMPRIAS, DIADUMENUS
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… Secondly, when the world shall be set on fire (as the Stoics hold), there will then no evil be left, but all will then be prudent and wise…
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… But Chrysippus and Cleanthes, having filled (as one may say) heaven, earth, air, and sea with gods, have not yet made any one of all these gods immortal or eternal, except Jupiter alone, in whom they consume all the rest; so that it is no more suitable for him to consume others than to be consumed himself. For it is alike an infirmity to perish by being resolved into another, and to be saved by being nourished by the resolution of others into himself… but they themselves proclaim it aloud in their writings concerning the gods, Providence, Fate, and Nature, expressly saying that all the other gods were born, and shall die by the fire, melting away, in their opinion, as if they were of wax or tin…
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CONTRADICTIONS OF THE STOICS.
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… Chrysippus therefore is, according to Antipater, not one of “all men”; for he thinks none of the gods, except Fire, to be incorruptible, but that they all equally were born and will die. These things are, in a manner, everywhere said by him…
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THE EATING OF FLESH.
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For we eat not lions and wolves by way of revenge; but we let those go, and catch the harmless and tame sort, and such as have neither stings nor teeth to bite with, and slay them; which, so may Jove help us, Nature seems to us to have produced for their beauty and comeliness only…
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LITERARY ESSAYS.
THE LIFE AND POETRY OF HOMER
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Now to the same science belongs arithmetic and music, which Pythagoras especially honored. Let us see whether these are mentioned by our poet. Very often. A few examples from very many will suffice. For Pythagoras thought number had the greatest power and reduced everything to numbers—both the motions of the stars and the creation of living beings. And he established two supreme principles,—one finite unity, the other infinite duality. The one the principle of good, the other of evil. For the nature of unity being innate in what surrounds the whole creation gives order to it, to souls virtue, to bodies health, to cities and dwellings peace and harmony, for every good thing is conversant with concord. The nature of duality is just the contrary,—to the air disturbance, to souls evil, to bodies disease, to cities and dwellings factions and hostilities. For every evil comes from discord and disagreement. So he demonstrates of all the successive numbers that the even are imperfect and barren; but the odd are full and complete, because joined to the even they preserve their own character. Nor in this way alone is the odd number superior, but also added to itself it generates an even number. For it is creative, it keeps its original force and does not allow of division, since PER SE the mind is superior. But the even added to itself neither produces the odd nor is indivisible. And Homer seems to place the nature of the one in the sphere of the good, and the nature of the dual in the opposite many times. Often he declares a good man to be [Greek omitted] “kind” and the adjective from it is “benignity”…
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PLUTARCH – MORALIA

ON THE SIGNS OF SOCRATES
1: I recall, Caphisias, that a painter once gave me, in the form of a comparison, no bad description of those who view pictures. Spectators who are laymen and without instruction in the art resemble, he said, those who greet a large company with a single salutation, whereas cultivated and artistic spectators resemble men who have a private word of welcome for everyone they meet; for the general impression that the first obtain of the performance is inaccurate and as it were a mere sketch; whereas the others use their critical judgement for a separate scrutiny of each detail, and thus allow nothing well or poorly executed to pass without a look or word of recognition. I think the same is true of real events: duller minds are content with history if they learn the mere general drift and upshot of the matter, whereas the spectator fired with emulation and the love of noble conduct, when he views the works which virtue, like a great art, has executed, is more delighted with the particulars, feeling that in the outcome much is due to chance, whereas in the actions themselves and in their causes he observes the details of the struggles of virtue pitted against fortune, and the sober acts of daring in peril that come of reason blended with the stress and passion of the moment…
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20: They were already well along in an inquiry of no trivial scope, the one Galaxidorus and Pheidolaüs had engaged in shortly before, when they raised the problem of the nature and mode of operation of the so called sign of Socrates. Simmias’ reply to Galaxidorus’ argument we did not hear; speaking for himself, however, he said that he had once asked Socrates about the matter without receiving an answer and had therefore never asked again; but he had often heard Socrates express the view that men who laid claim to visual communication with Heaven were impostors, while to such as affirmed that they had heard a voice he paid close attention and earnestly inquired after the particulars. “It thus occurred to us,” Simmias went on to say, “as we examined the question in private among ourselves, to surmise that Socrates’s sign was perhaps no vision, but rather the perception of a voice or else the mental apprehension of language that reached him in some strange way. So in sleep, where no sound is uttered, we fancy, as we receive the impression or notion of certain statements, that we hear people speaking.
“But whereas some men actually have this sort of apprehension in dreams, hearing better asleep, when the body is quiet and undisturbed, while when they are awake their soul can hear the higher powers but faintly, and moreover, as they are overwhelmed by the tumult of their passions and the distractions of their wants, they cannot listen or attend to the message; Socrates, on the other hand, had an understanding which, being pure and free from passion, and commingling with the body but little, for necessary ends, was so sensitive and delicate as to respond at once to what reached him. What reached him, one would conjecture, was not spoken language, but the unuttered words of a daemon, making voiceless contact with his intelligence by their sense alone. For speech is like a blow — when we converse with one another, the words are forced through our ears and the soul is compelled to take them in —; whereas the intelligence of the higher power guides the gifted soul, which requires no blows, by the touch of its thought; and the soul on its part yields to the slackening and tightening of its movements by the higher intelligence. No constraint is exerted, as no passion pulls the other way, and the movements of the soul respond easily and gently, like reins that give. This should occasion no surprise, when we observe that large merchantmen are brought round by small tillers, and that potters’ wheels whirl about evenly at the touch of the finger tip; for these, though inanimate, nevertheless, being constructed to revolve easily, move so smoothly that they respond to the mover at the slightest pressure. But the soul of man, which is strung with countless inward movements, as with resilient cords, is, when rationally dealt with, by far the most sensitive of all instruments, moving at a slight impulse toward the goal conceived by the understanding. For here it is in the understanding, to which they are made fast and taut, that the passions and inward movements have their origins; and when that is struck, these are pulled and thereby exercise traction on the man and give him tension. Indeed, it is most of all by this that we are enabled to comprehend the great power of an idea. For insensate bones and thews and flesh saturated with humours, and the inert and prostrate mass they constitute, the instant the soul conceives a purpose in the understanding and sets its movement going for that end, arise as a whole, tense and co-ordinate in all its parts, and fly as if winged to carry the idea to execution.
“Moreover, it is no hard or hopeless task to understand by what manner of impact, co-ordination, and suggestion the soul receives a thought and thereby with its movements draws after it the corporeal mass. But if the body is moved with so little trouble by a notion that enters the understanding without the help of spoken language, it cannot be hard, I think, to believe that the understanding may be guided by a higher understanding and a diviner soul, that lays hold of it from without by a touch, which is the way in which it is the nature of thought to impinge on thought, just as light produces a reflection. For in very truth our recognition of one another’s thoughts through the medium of the spoken word is like groping in the dark; whereas the thoughts of daemons are luminous and shed their light on the daemonic man. Their thoughts have no need of verbs or nouns, which men use as symbols in their intercourse, and thereby behold mere counterfeits and likenesses of what is present in thought, but are unaware of the originals except for those persons who are illuminated, as I have said, by some special and daemonic radiance. Even so the phenomenon of speech serves in a way to allay the doubts of the incredulous. For on receiving the impression of articulate sounds, the air is fully changed to language and speech and conveys the thought to the soul of the hearer. Need we then feel surprised that the air, with its ready susceptibility, should also be transformed by the mere ideas of higher beings and thereby indicate to divine and exceptional men the meaning of him who conceived the idea? For just as the sound of sappers’ blows is detected by bronze shields, which re-echo it as it rises from the depths of the earth and strikes them, whereas through everything else it slips unnoticed; so the messages of daemons pass through all other men, but find an echo in those only whose character is untroubled and soul unruffled, the very men in fact we call holy and daemonic. In popular belief, on the other hand, it is only in sleep that men receive inspiration from on high; and the notion that they are so influenced when awake and in full possession of their faculties is accounted strange and incredible. This is like supposing that a musician uses his lyre when the strings are slack, but does not touch or play it when it has been adjusted to a scale and attuned. This belief arises from ignorance of the cause of this insensibility: the inner lack of attunement and the confusion in the men themselves. From this my friend Socrates was free, as is shown by the oracle delivered to his father when Socrates was yet a boy. It bade him let the child do whatever came into his mind, and not do violence to his impulses or divert them, but allow them free play, taking no further trouble about him than to pray to Zeus Agoraeus and the Muses, surely implying by this that he had a better guide of life in himself than a thousand teachers and attendants.
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… Homer too, it is evident, knew the distinction of which we others speak, as he calls some diviners ‘consulters of birds’ and ‘priests,’ but thinks that others indicate the future from an understanding and awareness of the actual conversation of the gods. These are his words:

That counsel Helenus in his heart perceived,
The son of Priam, which the gods had reached
In their deliberation

and

Such speech of the immortal gods I heard.

For as outsiders perceive and recognize the intention of kings and generals from beacons and the proclamations of heralds and the blare of trumpets, whereas to confidants and intimates it is imparted by the kings and generals themselves, so heaven consorts directly with but few, and rarely, but to the great majority gives signs, from which arises the art called divination. The gods, then, order the life of but few among men, such as they wish to make supremely blessed and in very truth divine; whereas souls delivered from birth and henceforth at rest from the body — set quite free, as it were, to range at will — are, as Hesiod says, daemons that watch over man. For as athletes who from old age have given up training do not entirely lose their ardour and their love of bodily prowess, but look on with pleasure as others train, and call out encouragement and run along beside them, so those who are done with the contests of life, and who, from prowess of soul, have become daemons, do not hold what is done and said and striven after in this world in utter contempt, but are propitious to contenders for the same goal, join in their ardour, and encourage and help them to the attainment of virtue than they see them keeping up the struggle and all but reaching their heart’s desire. For daemons do not assist all indifferently, but as when men swim a sea, those standing on the shore merely view in silence the swimmers who are still far out distant from land, whereas they help with hand and voice alike such as have come near, and running along and wading in beside them bring them safely in, such too, my friends, is the way of daemons: as long as we are head over ears in the welter of worldly affairs and are changing body after body, like conveyances, they allow us to fight our way out and persevere unaided, as we endeavour by our own prowess to come through safe and reach a haven; but when in the course of countless births a soul has stoutly and resolutely sustained a long series of struggles, and as her cycle draws to a close, she approaches the upper world, bathed in sweat, in imminent peril and straining every nerve to reach the shore, God holds it no sin for her daemon to go to the rescue, but lets whoever will lend aid. One daemon is eager to deliver by his exhortations one soul, another another, and the soul on her part, having drawn close, can hear, and is thus saved; but if she pays no heed, she is forsaken by her daemon and comes to no happy end.”
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PLUTARCH – MORALIA

THE DINNER OF THE SEVEN WISE MEN
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8: Periander at this burst out laughing, and said, “We are fittingly punished, Aesop, for becoming involved in other subjects before introducing all of those from Amasis, to which we gave precedence. I beg, Neiloxenus, that you will look at the rest of the letter and take advantage of the fact that the men are all here together.”
“Well, in truth,” said Neiloxenus, “the demand of the Ethiopian can hardly be called anything but a ‘depressing cryptic dispatch,’ to borrow a phrase from Archilochus, but your friend Amasis is more civilized and cultivated in proposing such questions; for he bade the king name the oldest thing, the most beautiful, the greatest, the wisest, the most common, and besides these, as I can attest, to name also the most helpful thing and the most harmful, and strongest and the easiest.”
“Did the Ethiopian king give an answer and a solution for each of these questions?”
“Yes, in his way,” said Neiloxenus, “but you must judge for yourselves when you hear his answers. For my king holds it to be a very important matter not to be caught impugning the answers falsely; and likewise, if the respondent is making any slip in these, he would not have this pass unquestioned. I will read the answers of the Ethiopian as he gave them:
(a) ‘What is the oldest thing?’ ‘Time.’
(b) ‘What is the greatest?’ ‘The universe.’
(c) ‘What is the wisest?’ ‘Truth.’
(d) ‘What is the most beautiful?’ ‘Light.’
(e) ‘What is most common?’ ‘Death.’
(f) ‘What is most helpful?’ ‘God.’
(g) ‘What is most harmful?’ ‘An evil spirit.’
(h) ‘What is strongest?’ ‘Fortune.’
(i) ‘What is easiest?’ ‘Pleasure.’
9: After this second reading, there was silence for a time, and then Thales asked Neiloxenus if Amasis had approved the answers. When Neiloxenus replied that Amasis had accepted some, but was much dissatisfied with others, Thales said, “As a matter of fact there is not a thing in them that cannot be impugned, but they all contain gross errors and evidences of ignorance. For instance, in the very first one, how can time be the oldest thing if a part of it is past, a part present, and a part future? For the time which is to come would clearly be younger than events and persons that now are. And to hold that truth is wisdom seems to me no different from declaring that light is the eye. If he thought the light beautiful, as it really is, how did he come to overlook the sun itself? Among the others the answer about gods and evil spirits evinces boldness and daring, but the one about Fortune contains much bad logic; for Fortune would not be so fickle about abiding with one if it were the mightiest and strongest thing in existence. Nor is death, in fact, the most common thing; for it does not affect the living. But, to avoid giving the impression of merely passing judgement upon the statements of others, let us compare answers of our own with his. And I offer myself as the first, if Neiloxenus so desires, to be questioned on each topic; and taking the questions in the order given, I will repeat them, together with my answers:
(a) ‘What is the oldest thing?’ ‘God,’ : said Thales, “for God is something that has no beginning.’
(b) ‘What is the greatest?’ ‘Space; for while the universe contains within it all else, this contains the universe.’
(c) ‘What is the most beautiful?’ ‘The Universe; for everything that is ordered as it should be is a part of it.’
(d) ‘What is the wisest?’ ‘Time; for it has discovered some things already, and shall discover all the rest.’
(e) ‘What is most common?’ ‘Hope; for those who have nothing else have that ever with them.’
(f) ‘What is most helpful?’ ‘Virtue; for it makes everything else helpful by putting it to a good use.’
(g) ‘What is most harmful?’ ‘Vice; for it harms the greatest number of things by its presence.’
(h) ‘What is strongest?’ ‘Necessity; for that alone is insuperable.’
(i) ‘What is easiest?’ ‘To follow Nature’s course; because people often weary of pleasures.’ ”
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11: Mnesiphilus the Athenian, a warm friend and admirer of Solon’s, said, “I think it is no more than fair, Periander, that the conversation, like the wine, should not be apportioned on the basis of wealth or rank, but equally to all, as in a democracy, and that it should be general. Now in what has just been said dealing with dominion and kingdom, we who live under a popular government have no part. Therefore I think that at this time each of you ought to contribute an opinion on the subject of republican government, beginning again with Solon.”
It was accordingly agreed to do this, and Solon began by saying, “But you, Mnesiphilus, as well as all the rest of the Athenians, have heard the opinion which I hold regarding government. However, if you wish to hear it again now, I think that a State succeeds best, and most effectively perpetuates democracy, in which persons uninjured by a crime, no less than the injured person, prosecute the criminal and get him punished.”
Second was Bias, who said that the most excellent democracy was that in which the people stood in as much fear of the law as of a despot.
Following him Thales said that it was the one having citizens neither too rich nor too poor.
After him Anacharsis said that it was the one in which, all else being held in equal esteem, what is better is determined by virtue and what is worse by vice.
Fifth, Cleobulus said that a people was most righteous whose public men dreaded censure more than they dreaded the law.
Sixth, Pittacus said that it was where bad men are not allowed to hold office, and good men are not allowed to refuse it.
Chilon, turning to the other side, declared that the best government is that which gives greatest heed to laws and least heed to those who talk about them.
Finally, Periander once more concluded the discussion with the decisive remark, that they all seemed to him to approve a democracy which was most like an aristocracy.
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PLUTARCH – MORALIA

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

PLUTARCH – ESSAYS

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

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