2
Now heDemocritus; Diels, Frag. d. Vorsokratiker ⁵, ii. p. 132, Frag. 3; Marcus Aurelius, iv. 24; Seneca, De Tranquillitate Animi, xiii. 1, where the statement is made that these words form the beginning of Democritus’s work (see especially Siefert, op. cit., p. 8); De Ira, iii. 6. 3. But Plutarch misunderstands the meaning; Democritus did not advise renouncing public life completely: Cf. Moralia, 1100 b-c. Note also the word many in the present passage. (The following paragraph is cited by Stobaeus, vol. iii. pp. 651 f. ed. Hense.) who said, The man who would be tranquil in his mind must not engage in many affairs, either private or public, first of all makes our tranquillity very expensive if it is bought at the price of inactivity; it is as though he advised every sick man: Lie still, poor wretch, and move not from your bed.Euripides, Orestes, 258; quoted again 501 c, infra, and in Moralia, 788 f, 901 a, 1126 a; the words are addressed by Electra to Orestes, delirious after the murder of his mother, and must be taken closely with the following clause. And yet it is true that a state of bodily stupor is a bad remedy for insanity; but no whit better as a physician of the soul is he who would relieve it of its disturbances and distress by prescribing idleness and softness and the betrayal of friends and family and country. Cf. Moralia, 135 b.
