ἄγου δ᾽ μ᾽, ὦ Ζεῦ, καὶ σύ γ᾽ ἡ Πεπρωμένη
ὅποι ποθ' ὑμῖν εἰμι διατεταγμένος·
ὡς ἕψομαί γ᾽ ἄοκνος· ἦν δὲ μὴ θέλω
κακὸς γενόμενος οὐδὲν ἧττον ἔψομαι.
Thus rendered by Seneca (Ep. 107, § 10):
duc, O parens celsique dominator poli,
quocumque placuit: nulla parendi mora est.
Adsum impiger. fac nolle: comitabor gemens
malusque patiar facere quod licuit bono.
ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.
The lines are by way of answer to the objection that πρόνοια cannot exist with the doctrine of freewill.
9. ἀνικήτοις: Hom. Il. viii. 30; Soph. O.C. 1515; Job xlii. 2.
10. κεραυνόν: from Homer onward the weapon of Zeus (κερουνοφόρος, κεραυνοῦχος, tonans, tonitrualis). Heracl. frag. 20 with Bywator's reff., ib. 28, τὰ δὲ πάντα οἱακίζει κεραυνός: Ritter-Preller, 28. κεραυνός was a semi-oracular word for fire: “The peculiar kind of matter forming, as it were, the body of the Logos, Her. believes to be fire” (Adam, Religious Teachers of Greece, p. 223). According to Cleanthes the “Logos” was eternal, and so it was conceived by Heraclitus himself; “it” was without beginning or end, piloting (οἱακίζει) all things through all, like a wary steersman.
For ll. 9-13 cf. Heb. iv. 12 (Westcott).
12. κοινὸν λόγον: Ritter-Preller (ed. 7, 1888), 398 (c). In Plotinus the word λόγος has several shades of meaning—Reason, Creative power (or activity), etc., Inge, Phil. of Plotinus, i, 156. In Philo we find the λόγος separated from the supreme God, and it is frequently personified (as in N.T., John i. 14), becoming the immanent reality of the world (not unlike the Socratean conception of God as ἡ ἐν τῷ παντὶ φρόνησις, Wordsworth's “Wisdom and Spirit of the Universe”: Adam, loc. cit., p. 371). In Cleanthes' hymn, as generally in Stoicism, the world is permeated by
