Plutarch

“ You allow, I suppose, that the greatest good is to require no food at all?’ ‘Not I, by any means,’ answered Cleodorus, ‘if I am to say what I think, especially with a table in front of us. Take away food, and you take away the table—that is to say, the altar of the Gods of Friendship and Hospitality. As Thales tells us that, if you do away with the earth, the whole cosmos will fall into confusion, so the abolition of food means the dissolution of house and home. ”

“ Thou unto her art father, and honoured mother, and brother, it is no less a matter of pride to hear a wife say, ‘Husband, thou unto me art guide, philosopher, and teacher of the noblest and divinest lessons.’ It is studies of this kind that tend to keep a woman from foolish practices. She will be ashamed to be dancing, when she is learning geometry. She will lend no ear to the incantations of sorcery, when she is listening to those of Plato and Xenophon. ”

“ Let us listen to a speaker with friendly courtesy, regarding ourselves as guests at a sacred banquet or sacrificial offering. Let us praise his ability when he makes a hit, or be satisfied with the mere goodwill of a man who is making the public a present of his views and endeavouring to convince others by means of the arguments which have convinced himself. When he goes right, let us consider that his rightness is due not to chance or accident, but to painstaking effort and learning. Let us take a pattern by it, and not only admire it, but emulate it. ”

“ On the contrary, our duty is to grapple with every question, to persevere, to be resolved on making progress, and then to wait for that familiarity which converts all right action into a pleasure. It will not be long before it arrives, casting upon the study a flood of light, and inspiring an ardent passion for excellence. To be without such passion and to put up with the ordinary type of life because one is driven from philosophy by a lack of mettle, is to be a miserable or cowardly creature. ”

“ For a long time you have been growing up in the company of philosophy. From the first you have been accustomed to a taste of philosophic reason in everything that you have been taught or told as a child. It should therefore be in a well-disposed and congenial spirit that you come to Philosophy, who alone can adorn a youth with that finish of manhood which genuinely and rationally deserves the name. ”

“ A despot who desires to rule over slaves rather than men is no better than a farmer who is ready to reap a harvest of darnel and cammock in preference to wheat and barley. Among the many undesirable features of despotic rule, the one desirable element is the honour and glory, in a case where the subjects are good but the ruler is better, and where they are great but he is regarded as greater. If he is satisfied with safety without honour, his right course would be to rule over a herd of sheep, horses, or oxen, not over human beings. ”

“ Sometimes, in order to flatter a public speaker, a philosopher is belittled, or the favour of profligate women is won by miscalling faithful and loving wives ‘provincial and unattractive’. Most pitiful in its baseness is the fact that the toady does not even spare himself. As a wrestler crouches his body in order to throw another, so he insidiously contrives to compliment his neighbour by disparaging himself. ”

“ But he must not treat the pleasure of the lecture as its end, nor expect to come out of the philosopher’s school with a beaming face and humming a tune. He must not ask for scented unguents when what he needs is a lotion or a poultice. On the contrary, he should be grateful if a pungent argument acts upon his mind like smoke upon a hive, and clears out all the darkness and mistiness that fill it. ”

“ It is just as strange when a man has fought his ship in a long battle with jealousies, and then, after they are quietly laid, backs out of public life, and, in abandoning his activities, abandons his partners and associates. The more time there has been, the more friends and fellow-workers he has made; but he is neither in a position to lead them with him off the stage, as a poet does his chorus, |F| nor has he the right to leave them in the lurch. A long public life is like an old tree. ”

“ If any one is not satisfied with the beams which the sun lavishes so abundantly upon all, but audaciously insists upon gazing unabashed at the orb itself and probing the light to its heart, the result is blindness. It was therefore wise of Philippides, the comic poet, when King Lysimachus once asked him, ‘What can I give you of mine?’ to reply, ‘Anything, Sire, but your secrets.’ The finest and most pleasant aspects of royalty are those displayed outwardly—its banquets, wealth, pomps and shows, graces and favours. ”

“ Consequently he acts like the painter whose cocks in a picture were wretchedly done, and who therefore ordered his slave to drive any real cocks as far from his canvas as possible. In the same way the flatterer drives away real friends and prevents them coming near. If he fails, while openly he will fawn upon them and pay them court and deference as being his betters, in secret he will throw out calumnious hints and suggestions. And if the word in secret has given a scratch without at once absolutely producing a wound, he never forgets Medius’s maxim. ”

“ It is the place of the understanding to direct the reason and of the reason to serve the understanding. Fortune cannot overcome them, calumny cannot rob us of them, disease cannot corrupt them, old age cannot impair them. The understanding is the only thing that renews its youth as it grows old, and, while time carries off everything else, it brings old age one gift—that of knowledge. ”

“ The purpose of wine is to create pleasure and friendly feeling; but to insist upon our drinking it in great quantities and without qualifying it, is to lead us into offensive and wanton behaviour. So, while talk plays the most pleasant and human part in our intercourse, those who make a wrong and rash use of it render it inhuman and insufferable. The means by which they imagine they are ingratiating themselves and gaining admiration and friendship, only makes them a nuisance and wins them ridicule and dislike. ”

“ By submission to their husbands they win regard; by seeking to govern them they demean themselves worse than the men so governed. Meanwhile it is only right that the husband, in controlling the wife, should not be like an owner dealing with a chattel, but like the mind dealing with the body—sympathetic with the sympathy of organic union. It is possible to care for the body without being a slave to its pleasures and desires, and it is possible to rule a wife and yet do things to please and gratify her. ”

“ A flatterer, on the contrary, not only avers that a king, a rich man, or a man in power, is prosperous and fortunate; he also declares that he is pre-eminent in wisdom, art, and every form of excellence. Hence while there are persons who have no patience to listen when the Stoics describe the sage as at the same time ‘rich, beautiful, noble, and king’, a toady will make out that the rich man is at the same time an orator, a poet, and—if he so wishes—a painter and a musician. ”

“ For the most part the typical Roman, less genuinely impassioned than the Greek for thought pure and simple, looked upon any ‘specializing’ in philosophy as likely to lead either to too cloistered a virtue or to the acquisition of eccentric, if not dangerous, views. A certain modicum of philosophical knowledge might be an adornment to life, and a certain modicum of philosophical training might impart a steadiness to character, but the study must not be pursued to the point at which the student himself stood in danger of becoming a ‘philosopher’. ”

“ Meanwhile, in listening to admonition and reproof, the pupil must be neither insensible nor unmanly. There are some who bear the philosopher’s reproaches with an easy-going indifference, laughing under the correction and applauding the corrector, just as parasites applaud in sheer impudence and recklessness when they are abused by those who keep them. The shamelessness which such persons display is no proper or genuine proof of courage. ”

“ The father says: ‘Be industrious’; the parasite says: ‘Be idle; for life is only a moment altogether. |B| One ought to live, not merely exist. Why trouble about your father’s threats? He is an old driveller with one foot in the coffin, and we will promptly pick him up on our shoulders and carry him off to his grave.’ One person tempts him with a drab, or with the seduction of a married woman, plundering and stripping the father of all the provision for his old age. They are an abominable crew; their friendship is a sham; of candour they have no idea; they toady the rich and despise the poor. ”

“ Those whose excellence is genuine and firmly seated find it the highest honour to bestow honour, the highest distinction to bestow distinction, where honour and distinction are due. Such conduct implies that they have fame enough and to spare, and are free from jealousy, whereas those who are niggards of praise to others are in all probability pinched and hungry for praise of their own. ”

“ We must beware of inflicting upon our old age an unbecoming or exacting task, when so many portions of public work are so well suited to that time of life. If it had been proper for us to go on singing all our days, there are at our disposal many keys and modes, or, as the musicians call them, ‘systems.’ Our right course in our old age would have been to cultivate, not a mode both high and sharp, but one combining ease with appropriate character. ”

“ It is more sickening than the disease to be told, ‘This is the result of your reckless self-indulgence, your laziness, your rich dishes, and your women.’ ‘What an unseasonable man you are! I am writing my will; the doctors are getting castor and scammony ready for me; and you come preaching and philosophizing!’ So, when a man is in trouble, the situation is not one for speaking your mind and moralizing. ”

“ As, however, no one else found out the truth, they joined battle, won the victory, killed Craterus without knowing him, and only discovered who he was from his corpse. So good a general was the silence of Eumenes in the battle, and so formidable the opponent whose presence it disguised, that his friends admired instead of blaming him for not forewarning them. Even if some one does find fault, it is better to be accused when mistrust has saved you than to be the accuser when trust proves your undoing. ”