331
But in the case of those who altogether exceed the bounds of right government and wholly refuse to proceed in its tracks, and who warn their counsellor to leave the government alone and not disturb it, on pain of death if he does disturb it, while ordering him to advise as to how all that contributes to their desires and appetites may most easily and quickly be secured for ever and ever—then, in such a case, I should esteem unmanly the man who continued to engage in counsels of this kind, and the man who refused to continue manly. This, then, being the view I hold, whenever anyone consults me concerning any very important affair relating to his life—the acquisition of wealth, for instance, or the care of his body or his soul,—if I believe that he is carrying on his daily life in a proper way, or that he will be willing to obey my advice in regard to the matters disclosed, then I give counsel readily and do not confine myself to some merely cursory reply. But if he does not ask my advice at all or plainly shows that he will in no wise obey his adviser, I do not of my own instance come forward to advise such an one, nor yet to compel him, not even were he my own son. To a slave, however, I would give advice, and if he refused it I would use compulsion. But to a father or mother I deem it impious to apply compulsion, On the subject of filial piety cf. Plat. Crito 51c, Plat. Laws 717b ff. unless they are in the grip of the disease of insanity; but if they are living a settled life which is pleasing to them, though not to me, I would neither irritate them with vain exhortations nor yet minister to them with flatteries by providing them with means to satisfy appetites of a sort such that I, were I addicted to them, would refuse to live. So likewise it behoves the man of sense to hold, while he lives, the same view concerning his own State: if it appears to him to be ill governed he ought to speak, if so be that his speech is not likely to prove fruitless nor to cause his death cf. Plat. L. 5.322b .; but he ought not to apply violence to his fatherland in the form of a political revolution, whenever it is impossible to establish the best kind of polity without banishing and slaughtering citizens, but rather he ought to keep quiet and pray for what is good both for himself and for his State. This, then, is the way in which I would counsel you—even as Dion and I together used to counsel Dionysius that he should, in the first place, so order his daily life as to gain the greatest possible mastery over himself, and to win for himself trusty friends and companions that so he might avoid the evils suffered by his father.
