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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. Hence it is a duty to make a point of indicating that the lines You, my child, have not the gift of arms in battle, Your concern must be for loving arms in wedlock,Homer, Il. v. 428. and Seeing that Zeus is wroth if you fight with a man far better,Not found in the MSS. of Homer but often printed as Iliad, xi. 543. See note on 24 C supra. do not differ from Know thyself, but have the same purport as this; and the lines, Fools! They know not how much more than all a half is,Hesiod, Works and Days, 40. and Evil counsel is the worst for him who gives it Ibid. 265. are identical with the doctrines of Plato in the Gorgias Plato, Gorgias, 473 A ff. and the Republic Plato, Republic, end of Book I. and Book IV.; cf. also 335 B. upon the principle that to do wrong is worse than to be wronged and to do evil is more injurious than to suffer evil. And on the words of Aeschylus, Nauck, Trag.Graec. Frag., Aeschylus, No. 352. Fear not; great stress of pain is not for long, we ought to remark that this is the oft repeated and much admired statement originating with Epicurus,One of the leading principles of Epicurus; cf. Diogenes Laertius, x. 140. namely that great pains shortly spend their force, and long continued pains have no magnitude. Of these two ideas Aeschylus has perspicuously stated the one and the other is a corollary thereto; for if great and intense pain is not lasting, then that which does not last is not great or hard to endure. Take these lines of Thespis Nothing by Thespis has been preserved, although a few lines attributed to him were current. See Nauck, Trag.Graec. Frag. p. 833.: You see that Zeus is first of gods in this, Not using lies or boast or silly laugh; With pleasure he alone is unconcerned. What difference is there between this and the statement, for the Divine Being sits throned afar from pleasure and pain, as Plato Plato, Letters, iii. 315 C. has put it? Consider what is said by Bacchylides Bacchylides, i. 21.: I shall assert that virtue hath the highest fame, But wealth with even wretched men is intimate, and again by Euripides Nauck, Trag.Graec. Frag., Euripides, No. 959. to much the same effect: There’s naught that I hold In a higher esteem Than a virtuous life; ’Twill ever be joined With those that are good. and Why seek vain possessions? Do ye think Virtue by wealth to compass? Wretched amid your comforts shall ye sit.Plutarch, as was often his practice (e.g.Moralia, 25 C or 646 C), seems to have condensed this quotation. The original of the first portion appears to have been given by Satyrus in his Life of Euripides (Oxyrhynchus Papyri, ix. 142), Why have you mortals acquired in vain many possessions, and think that by wealth you shall compass virtue? What boots it, should you have in your ancestral halls some fragment of Aetna’s cliff or Parian stone, gold-wrought, which you have secured? Cf. Nauck, Trag.Graec. Frag., Euripides, No. 960. Is not this a proof of what the philosophers say regarding wealth and external advantages, that without virtue they are useless and unprofitable for their owners?
