BOOK VII
it the best for him, or has been stationed by his commander, there methinks he ought to stay and run every risk, taking into account neither death nor any thing else save dishonour.[1]
46. But, my good sir, see whether nobility and goodness do not mean something other than to save and be saved; for surely a man worthy of the name must waive aside the question of the duration of life how- ever extended, and must not cling basely to life, but leaving these things in the hands of God pin his faith to the women's adage, his destiny no man can flee,' and thereafter consider in what way he may best live for such time as he has to live.[2]
47. Watch the stars in their courses as one that runneth about with them therein; and think constantly upon the reciprocal changes of the elements, for thoughts on these things cleanse away the mire of our earthly life.
48. Noble is this saying of Plato's.[3] Moreover he who discourses of men should, as if from some vantage-point[4] above, take a bird's-eye view of the things of earth, in its gatherings,[5] armies, husbandry, its inarriages and separations,[6] its births and deaths, the din of the law-court and the silence of the desert, barbarous races manifold, its feasts and mournings and markets, the medley of it all and its orderly conjunction of contraries.
49. Pass in review the far-off things of the past
- ↑ Plato, Apol. 28 E.
- ↑ Plato, Gorgias, 512 DE.
- ↑ What follows is obviously not a saying of Plato. We must therefore refer back to what precedes, or suppose that Plato's words have dropped out.
- ↑ ix. 30. cp. Lucian, Char. § 15; Icaro-Men. § 12.
- ↑ If κατὰ ἀγέλας be read, it will mean literally, drove by drove, i.e. in its aggregations; if κάτω, ἀγέλας, the latter word must refer to gatherings of men.
- ↑ This might mean treaties of peace, but there seems to be a system of contrasted pairs.
