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Particular attention must be paid to the other words also, when their signification is shifted about and changed by the poets according to various circumstances. An example is the word virtue. For inasmuch as virtue not only renders men sensible, honest, and upright in actions and words, but also often enough secures for them repute and influence, the poets, following this notion, make good repute and influence to be virtue, giving them this name in exactly the same way that the products of the olive and the chestnut are called olives and chestnuts, the same names as the trees that bear them. So then when poets say, Sweat the gods have set before the attainment of virtue,Hesiod, Works and Days, 289. and Then the Greeks by their virtue broke the line of their foemen,Homer, Il. xi. 90. and If to die be our fate, Thus to die is our right Merging our lives into virtue,Nauck, Trag.Graec. Frag., Euripides, No. 994. Again quoted by Plutarch, Pelopidas, 317 E. let our young man at once feel that these sayings relate to the best and godliest estate to which we can attain, which we think of as correctness of reasoning, the height of good sense, and a disposition of soul in full agreement therewith. But when at another time, in his reading, he finds this line, Zeus makes virtue in men both to increase and diminish,Homer, Il. xx. 242. or this, Virtue and glory are attendant on riches,Hesiod, Works and Days, 313. let him not sit astounded and amazed at the rich, as though they were able to purchase virtue without ado for money, nor let him believe either that the increase or diminution of his own wisdom rests with Fortune, but let him consider that the poet has employed virtue instead of repute, or influence, or good fortune, or the like. For assuredly by evil the poets sometimes signify badness in its strict sense, and wickedness of soul, as when Hesiod Hesiod, Works and Days, 287. says, Evil may always be had by all mankind in abundance, and sometimes some other affliction or misfortune, as when Homer Homer, Od. xix. 360. says, Since full soon do mortals who live in evil grow aged. And so too anybody would be sadly deceived, should he imagine that the poets give to happiness the sense which the philosophers give to it, namely, that of complete possession or attainment of good, or the perfection of a life gliding smoothly along in accord with nature, and that the poets do not oftentimes by a perversion of the word call the rich man happy and blessed, and call influence or repute happiness. Now Homer Ibid. iv. 93. has used the words correctly: No delight Logically, we should expect here a word meaning happy. See the critical note on the opposite page. have I in ruling these possessions, and so has Menander:Kock, Com. Att. Frag. iii. p. 184, and Allinson, Menander in L.C.L. p. 506. A great estate have I, and rich am called By all, but I am called by no man blest. But Euripides Euripides, Medea, 603. works much disturbance and confusion when he says, May I ne’er have a painful happy life, and Why do you honour show to tyranny, Happy iniquity? Euripides, Phoenissae, 549. unless, as has been said, one follows the figurative and perverted use of the words. This, then, is enough on this subject.
