future, relying on these opinions, walk about upright, free; not trusting to the size of your body, as an athlete, for a man ought not to be invincible in the way that an ass is.[1]
Who then is the invincible? It is he whom none of the things disturb which are independent of the will. Then examining one circumstance after another I observe, as in the case of an athlete; he has come off victorious in the first contest: well then, as to the second? and what if there should be great heat? and what, if it should be at Olympia? And the same I say in this case: if you should throw money in his way, he will despise it. Well, suppose you put a young girl in his way, what then? and what, if it is in the dark?[2] what if it should be a little reputation, or abuse; and what, if it should be praise; and what if it should be death? He is able to overcome all. What then if it be in heat, and what if it is in the rain,[3] and what if he be in a melancholy (mad) mood, and what if he be asleep? He will still conquer. This is my invincible athlete.
- ↑ That is obstinate, as this animal is generally; and sometimes very obstinate. The meaning then is, as Schweighaeuser says: "a man should be invincible, not with a kind of stupid obstinacy or laziness and slowness in moving himself like an ass, but he should be invincible through reason, reflection, meditation, study, and diligence."
- ↑ "From the rustics came the old proverb, for when they commend a man's fidelity and goodness they say he is a man with whom you may play the game with the fingers in the dark." Cicero, De Officiis, iii. 19. See Forcellini, Micare.
- ↑ The MSS. have ὑομένος or οἰόμενος. Schweighaeuser has accepted Upton's emendation of οἰνωμένος, but I do not. The "sleep" refers to dreams. Aristotle, Ethic, i. 13, says: "better are the visions (dreams) of the good (ἐπιεικών) than those of the common sort;" and Zeno taught that "a man might from his dreams judge of the progress that he was making, if he observed that in his sleep he was not pleased with anything bad, nor desired or did anything unreasonable or unjust." Plutarch, περὶ προκοπῆς, ed. Wyttenbach, vol. i. c. 12.
