BOOK X
this thou wilt quickly forget thy wrath, with this reflection too to aid thee, that a man is under constraint[1]; for what should he do? Or, if thou art able, remove the constraint.
31. Let a glance at Satyron call up the image of Socraticus or Eutyches or Hymen, and a glance at Euphrates the image of Eutychion or Silvanus, and a glance at Alciphron Tropaeophorus, and at Severus Xenophon or Crito.[2] Let a glance at thyself bring to mind one of the Caesars, and so by analogy in every case. Then let the thought strike thee: Where are they now? Nowhere,[3] or none can say where. For thus shalt thou habitually look upon human things as mere smoke[4] and as naught; and more than ever so, if thou bethink thee that what has once changed will exist no more throughout eternity. Why strive then and strain[5]? Why not be content to pass this thy short span of life in becoming fashion?
What material, what a field for thy work dost thou forgo! For what are all these things but objects for the exercise of a reason that hath surveyed with accuracy and due inquiry into its nature the whole sphere of life? Continue then until thou hast assimilated these truths also to thyself, as the vigorous digestion assimilates every food, or the blazing fire converts into warmth and radiance whatever is cast into it.[6]
32. Give no one the right to say of thee with truth that thou art not a sincere, that thou art not a
- ↑ vii. 63.
- ↑ Xenophon and Crito are well known. Severus was probably the father of Marcus son-in-law (i. 14). Euphrates was the philosopher friend of Pliny and Hadrian. Nothing certain is known of the others.
- ↑ vii. 58.
- ↑ xii. 33 and verses at end of ms. A. See Introd. p. 1.
- ↑ The ms. reading what then (or, thou then) in what? is unintelligible.
- ↑ iv. 1.
