BOOK V
and brought the more excellent things into mutual accord.
31. How hast thou borne thyself heretofore towards Gods, parents, brothers, wife, children, teachers, tutors, friends, relations, household? Canst thou say truly of them all to this day,
And call to mind all that thou hast passed through, all thou hast found strength to bear; that the story of thy life is now full-told and thy service is ending; and how many beautiful sights thou hast seen, how many pleasures and pains thou hast disregarded, forgone what ambitions, and repaid with kindness how much unkindness.[2]
32. Why do unskilled and ignorant souls confound[3] him who has skill and has knowledge? What soul, then, has skill and knowledge? Even that which knoweth beginning and end, and the reason that informs all Substance, and governs the Whole from ordered cyele to cycle[4] through all eternity.
33. But a little while and thou shalt be burnt ashes or a few dry bones, and possibly a name, possibly not a name even.[5] And a name is but sound and a far off echo. And all that we prize so highly in our lives is empty and rotten and paltry, and we but as puppies snapping at each other, as quarrelsome children now laughing and anon in tears. But faith and modesty and justice and truth
- ↑ Hom. Od. iv. 690.
- ↑ x. 36. There is no Pharisaism here, as some have most unwarrantably asserted.
- ↑ cp. St. Paul, 1 Cor. i. 27 (Auth. Vers.).
- ↑ v. 13; x. 7.
- ↑ viii. 25; xii. 27.
- ↑ Hesiod, Op. 197. cp. Eur. Med. 439 and Lucian, Nigr. 16, who, speaking of Rome, says much the same of αἰδὼς and ἀρετὴ and δικαιοσύνη. See also Dio 71, 24, § 2.
