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Chrysippus has rightly indicated how the poet’s statements can be given a wider application, saying that what is serviceable should be taken over and made to apply to like situations. For when Hesiod Hesiod, Works and Days, 348. says, Nor would even an ox disappear were there not a bad neighbour, he says the same thing also about a dog and about an ass and about all things which in a similar way can disappear. And again when Euripides Nauck, Trag.Graec. Frag., Euripides, No. 958; again quoted by Plutarch, Moralia, 106 D. Cf. Cicero, Ad Atticum, ix. 2a, 2. says, What man who recks not death can be a slave? we must understand that he makes the same statement also about trouble and disease. For, as physicians who have learnt the efficacy of a drug adapted to one malady take it over and use it for every similar malady, so also when a statement has a general and universal value, we ought not to suffer it to be fixed upon one matter alone, but we ought to apply it to all the like, and inure the young men to see its general value, and quickly to carry over what is appropriate, and by many examples to give themselves training and practice in keen appreciation; so that when Menander says, Blest is the man who has both wealth and sense,From the Bridal Manager of Menander, cf. Kock, Com. Att. Frag. iii. Menander, No. 114, and Allinson, Menander in L.C.L. p. 342. they may think of the statement as holding good also about repute and leadership and facility in speaking; and so also that when they hear the rebuke which was administered by Odysseus to Achilles as he sat among the maidens in Scyrus, Dost thou, to dim the glory of thy race, Card wool, son of the noblest man in Greece? Nauck, Trag.Graec. Frag., Adesp. No. 9; again quoted by Plutarch with variant reading, Moralia, 72 E. they may imagine it to be addressed also to the profligate and the avaricious and the heedless and the ill-bred, as, for example, Dost drink, son of the noblest man in Greece, or gamble, or follow quail-fighting, The Greeks were very fond, not only of cock-fights, but also of quail-fights. Another form of the latter sport known as ὀρτυγοκοπία is often referred to by Greek writers and is perhaps best described by Pollus ix. 102 and 107. The quails were put into an enclosed ring, and their courage was tested by tapping them on the head with the finger or by pulling the feathers on op of their heads. If a bird showed fight, its owner won. Plutarch in the present passage, without doubt, uses ὀρτυγοκοπία to cover all forms of the sport. or petty trading, or the exacting of usury, without a thought of what is magnanimous or worthy of your noble parentage? Speak not of Wealth. I can’t admire a god Whose ready favour basest men secure.From the Aeolus of Euripides. Nauck, TGF., Euripides, No. 20; cf. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, v. 16. Therefore speak not of repute, either, or of personal beauty, or the general’s cloak, or the priestly crown, to all which we see the worst of men attaining. For ugly is the brood of cowardice,Nauck, TGF., Adesp. No. 357. and the same we may also aver of licentiousness, superstition, envy, and all the other pestilent disorders. Most excellently has Homer said Paris, poor wretch, excelling in looks,Homer, Il. iii. 39. and Hector, excelling in looks Ibid. xvii. 142. (for he declares the man deserving of censure and reproach who is endowed with no good quality better than personal comeliness), and this we must make to apply to similar cases, thereby curtailing the pride of those who plume themselves on things of no worth, and teaching the young to regard as a disgrace and reproach such phrases as excelling in wealth and excelling in dinners and excelling in children or oxen, and in fact even the use of the word excelling in such a connexion. For we ought to aim at the pre-eminence which comes from noble qualities, and we should strive to be first in matters of first importance, and to be great in the greatest: but the repute which comes from small and petty things is disreputable and paltry.
