Book 1
6
And how much better is it that you should have a catarrh than complain? Pray, what figure do you think Hercules would have made if there had not been a lion, and a hydra, and a stag, and unjust and brutal men, whom he expelled and cleared away? And what would he have done if none of these had existed? Is it not plain that he must have wrapped himself up and slept? In the first place, then, he would never have become a Hercules by slumbering away his whole life in such delicacy and ease; or if he had, what good would it have done? What would have been the use of his arm and his strength, of his patience and greatness of mind, if such circumstances and subjects of action had not roused and exercised him?
6
What, then, must we provide these things for ourselves; and introduce a boar and a lion and a hydra into our country?
