Book 3
15
IN every act consider what precedes and what follows, and then proceed to the act. If you do not consider, you will at first begin with spirit, since you have not thought at all of the things which follow; but afterwards when some consequences have shown themselves, you will basely desist (from that which you have begun).—I wish to conquer at the Olympic games.—[And I too, by the gods: for it is a fine thing]. But consider here what precedes and what follows; and then, if it is for your good, undertake the thing. You must act according to rules, follow strict diet, abstain from delicacies, exercise yourself by compulsion at fixed times, in heat, in cold; drink no cold water, nor wine, when there is opportunity of drinking it.The commentators refer us to Paul, 1 Cor. c. 9, 25. Compare Horace, Ars Poetica, 39: Versate diu quid ferre recusent, Quid valeant humeri. In a word you must surrender yourself to the trainer, as you do to a physician. Next in the contest, you must be covered with sand,Wolf thought that the word παρορύσσεσθαι might mean the loss of an eye; but other commentators give the word a different meaning. See Schweigh.’s note. sometimes dislocate a hand, sprain an ankle, swallow a quantity of dust, be scourged with the whip; and after undergoing all this, you must sometimes be conquered. After reckoning all these things, if you have still an inclination, go to the athletic practice. If you do not reckon them, observe you will behave like children who at one time play as wrestlers, then as gladiators, then blow a trumpet, then act a tragedy, when they have seen and admired such things. So you also do: you are at one time a wrestler (athlete), then a gladiator, then a philosopher, then a rhetorician; but with your whole soul you are nothing: like the ape you imitate all that you see; and always one thing after another pleases you, but that which becomes familiar displeases you. For you have never undertaken any thing after consideration, nor after having explored the whole matter and put it to a strict examination; but you have undertaken it at hazard and with a cold desire. Thus some persons having seen a philosopher and having heard one speak like EuphratesIn place of Euphrates the Encheiridion 29 had in the text Socrates, which name the recent editors of the Encheiridion altered to Euphrates, and correctly. The younger Pliny (i. Ep. 10) speaks in high terms of the merits and attractive eloquence of this Syrian philosopher Euphrates, who is mentioned by M. Antoninus (x. 31) and by others.— and yet who can speak like him?—wish to be philosophers themselves.
