BOOK III
upon the alluring loveliness of the young. And many such things there are which do not appeal to everyone, but will come home to him alone who is genuinely intimate with Nature and her works.
3. Hippocrates, after healing many a sick man, fell sick himself and died. Many a death have Chaldaeans foretold, and then their own fate has overtaken them also.[1] Alexander, Pompeius and Gaius Caesar times without number utterly destroyed whole cities, and cut to pieces many myriads of horse and foot on the field of battle, yet the day came when they too departed this life. Heraclitus, after endless speculations on the destruction of the world by fire, came to be filled internally with water, and died beplastered with cowdung. And lice caused the death of Democritus,[2] and other vermin of Socrates.
What of this? Thou hast gone aboard, thou hast set sail, thou hast touched land; go ashore; if indeed for another life, there is nothing even there void of Gods; but if to a state of non-sensation,[3] thou shalt cease being at the mercy of pleasure and pain and lackeying the bodily vessel[4] which is so much baser than that which ministers to it. For the one is intelligence and a divine 'genius,' the other dust and putrescence.
4. Fritter not away what is left of thy life in thoughts about others, unless thou canst bring these thoughts into relation with some common interest. For verily thou dost hereby cut thyself off from other work, that is, by thinking what so and so is
- ↑ iv. 48.
- ↑ Told of Pherecydes (Diog. Laert. Pher. v, viii.), of Speusippus (Speus. ix.), and even of Plato (Plato xxix.), but not elsewhere of Democritus. Lucian (?), Μacrob. 15, says Democritus died of starvation aged 104.
- ↑ cp. Justin, Apol. i. §§ 18, 57.
- ↑ So ras animi Cic. Tusc. i. 22, § 52. cp. St. Paul, 1 Thess. iv. 4 (σκεῦος); Dio Chrys. Οr. xii. 404 R. ἀνθρώπινον σῶμα ὡς ἀγγεῖον φρονήσεως καὶ λόγου.
