excluded?[1] But if you are ashamed to confess your own acts, see what Thrasonides[2] says and does, who having seen so much military service as perhaps not even you have, first of all went out by night, when Geta (a slave) does not venture out, but if he were compelled by his master, would have cried out much and would have gone out lamenting his bitter slavery. Next, what does Thrasonides say? A worthless girl has enslaved me, me whom no enemy ever did. Unhappy man, who are the slave even of a girl, and a worthless girl. Why then do you still call yourself free? and why do you talk of your service in the army? Then he calls for a sword and is angry with him who out of kindness refuses it; and he sends presents to her who hates him, and intreats and weeps, and on the other hand having had a little success he is elated. But even then how? was he free enough neither to desire nor to fear?
Now consider in the case of animals, how we employ the notion of liberty. Men keep tame lions shut up, and feed them, and some take them about; and who will say that this lion is free?[3] Is it not the fact that the more he lives at his ease, so much the more he is in a slavish condition? and who if he had perception and reason would wish to be one of these lions? Well, these birds when they are caught and are kept shut up, how much do they suffer in their attempts to escape?[4] and some of them die of hunger rather than submit to such a kind of life. And as many of them as live, hardly live and with suffering pine away; and if they ever find any opening, they make their
- ↑ A lover's exclusion by his mistress was a common topic, and a serious cause of complaint (Lucretius, iv. 1172):See also Horace, Odes, i. 25.
At lacrimans exclusus amator limina saepe
Floribus et sertis operit. - ↑ Thrasonides was a character in one of Menander's plays, intitled Μισούμενος or the Hated.
- ↑ It must have been rather difficult to manage a tame lion; but we read of such things among the Romans. Seneca, Epp. 41.
- ↑ The keeping of birds in cages, parrots and others, was also common among the Romans. Ovid (Amor. ii. 6) has written a beautiful elegy on the death of a favourite parrot.
