δ. And in this matter also the same principle holds good. You are not invited to somebody's banquet? That is because you did not give the entertainer the price that banquets are sold for—and they are sold for flattery, they are sold for attendance. Pay then the price if you think you will profit by the exchange. But if you are determined not to lay out these things, and at the same time to gain the others—surely you are a greedy man, and an infatuated.
ε. Shall you have nothing then instead of the banquet which you give up? Yea verily, you shall have this—not to have praised one whom you did not care to praise, nor to have endured the insolence of a rich man's doorkeepers.
XXVI.The will of Nature is to be learned from matters in which we ourselves are not concerned.[1] For instance, when a boy breaks a cup, if it be another man's, you are ready enough to say, Accidents will happen. Know then, that
- ↑ I think this is the true reading, although the other—'from matters in which we do not differ from each other'—has more external evidence to support it.
