ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

thing has been seen, then it is carried off and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away also.

RISE CONTENTED FROM THE FEAST OF LIFE.

GOD IS MERCIFUL.

The gods, being immortal, are not annoyed, because during so long a time they are obliged to endure men such as they are, and so many of them bad; and, besides this, they also take care of them in all ways.

To conclude, see how ephemeral and worthless human things are, and what was yesterday a little mucus, to-morrow will be a mummy or ashes. Pass, then, through this little space of time suita- to anger, and plenteous in mercy." bly to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew.

So Psalm (ciii. 8)- The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow

THE LIAR.

He, too, who transgresses her will (i.e., who lies) is clearly guilty of impiety to the eldest of

So Philippians (iv. 11)-"I have learned, in whatsoever state goddesses, for the universal nature is the nature of I am, therewith to be content."

NOTHING PERISHES UTTERLY.

things that are, and things that are have an intimate relation to all things that come into existence. Moreover, that universal nature is called I consist of figure and matter: neither of these truth, and is the first cause of all things that are will be annihilated, as neither of them were crea- true. He, therefore, who lies intentionally, acts ted from nothing. Therefore, every part of me, with impiety, inasmuch as he acts unjustly by dewhen a change shall take place, will go into some-ceiving, and he also who lies unintentionally, inasthing else in the world, and this again will be changed into some other thing, and so on ad infin

itum.

MAN IS AS HIS MIND.

Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.

THE REAL WORTH OF MAN.

Be aware, therefore, that every man is worth just so much as the things are worth about which he busies himself.

OBLIVION OF ALL THINGS.

much as he is at variance with universal nature, fighting against the nature of the universe; for he fights against it who is borne of himself to that which is contrary to truth, for he had received powers from nature, through the neglect of which he is not able to distinguish falsehood from truth.

DEATH.

Do not despise death, but receive it with gladness, as one of those things which nature wills. For as it is to be young and to grow old, to increase in size and reach maturity, to have teeth, a beard, and gray hairs, and to beget and to be preg nant, and to bring forth, and all other operations which the seasons of thy life bring, such also is

The time is at hand when thou wilt forget and thy dissolution. be forgotten by all.

LOVE YOUR ENEMIES.

It is the duty of men to love even those who injure them.

EVERYTHING IN CHANGE.

Nature, which rules the universe, will soon change all things which thou seest, and out of their substance will make other things, and again other things from the substance of them, that the world may ever be fresh.

OBEY GOD AND LOVE THY NEIGHBOR.

DEATH.

O death! mayest thou approach quickly, lest perchance I too should forget myself.

THE WRONG-DOER.

He who does wrong, does wrong against himself; he who acts unjustly, acts unjustly to himself by making himself bad.

So John (viii. 34)—" Whosoever committeth sin is the ser vant of sin."

FORGIVENESS.

If thou art able, correct by teaching those who sin; but if thou art unable, remember that indul

Be simple and modest in deportment, and treat gence is given to thee for this purpose; the gods,

with indifference whatever lies between virtue and vice. Love the human race; obey God.

WHAT HAS BEEN WILL BE.

Look at the past-at the innumerable changes of governments. Thou mayest thus conjecture with safety as to the future, for they will be altogether alike, and it will not be possible for them to deviate from the order of the things which are at present. Wherefore, to contemplate human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years. For what more wilt thou see?

too, are indulgent to such.

So Matthew (vi. 14)-" For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you."

ALL THINGS ARE THE SAME.

All things are the same, familiar in experience, ephemeral in time, and worthless in matter. Everything now is just as it was in the time of those whom we have buried.

ALL THINGS ARE CHANGING.

All things are changing; and thou thyself art in continuous mutation, and in a manner in constant wasting away; so also is the whole universe.

[blocks in formation]

The following passages, which speak of the drama of life, may serve as parallels to the sentiments of Antoninus (Demophilus, Similitudines, Moralia, i. 10, Orelli opera):

"Youth is the first part of life, like that of a drama; wherefore all attach themselves to it."

And again Aristonymus, in Stobaeus, cap. cvi. 14 (ed. Meincke, 1855)—

"Life is like a theatre, for the worst often occupy the best place in it."

And again one of the epigrams of Palladas (Anthol. Græc.

THE VALUE OF A POSTHUMOUS NAME AND REPU-x. 72)—
TATION.

Look down from above on the countless herds of men and their countless solemnities, their various voyagings in storms and calms, and the contests among those who are born, who live together and die. And consider also the life lived by others in the olden times, and the life of those who will live after thee, and the life now lived among barbarous nations, and how many know not even thy name, and how many will soon forget it, and how they who are now praising thee will very soon blame thee, and that neither a posthumous name is of any value, nor reputation, nor anything else.

MEN CONSTANTLY PASSING AWAY.

All things which thou seest will soon perish, and those who have looked on them, as they pass away, will themselves soon perish; and he who dies at the extremest old age will be brought into the same condition with him who died prematurely.

WHAT HAPPENS IS PREPARED FROM ALL ETERNITY. Whatever may happen to thee has been prepared to thee from all eternity; and the concatenation of causes was from eternity spinning the thread of thy being and of that which is incident to it.

WHAT TIME IS.

Let the idea of the whole of time and of the whole of substance be constantly before thy thoughts, and thou wilt find that all individual things as to substance are a grain of fig, and as to time, the turning of a gimlet.

WHAT MEN ARE IN REALITY.

Consider what men are when they are eating, sleeping, generating, easing themselves, and so forth; then what kind of men they are when they bear themselves haughtily, or are angry and scold from their lofty place. And then consider to whom they were slaves a short time ago, and for what things; and then think in what condition they will be after a little time.

THE DRAMAS OF LIFE.

Life is a scene, and we are players; either learn to play, forgetting the labors, or suffer the pain of losing."

Augustus, on his deathbed (Sueton. Aug. c. 99), said"Whether did they think that he had acted the drama of life in a becoming manner.

[ocr errors]

MEN ARE LIKE LEAVES..

Thy children are like leaves. Leaves, too, are they who bawl out as if they were worthy of credit, and give praise, or, in the opposite way, curse, or secretly find fault and sneer; and leaves, likewise, are those who shall receive and transmit a man's fame to aftertimes. For all such things as these "are produced in the season of spring;" then the wind throws them down; then the forest produces others in their stead. But a brief existence is common to all things, yet thou avoidest and formest all things as if they would be eternal. But a little while and thou shalt close thy eyes, and him who has attended thee to thy grave another soon will lament.

SOME ARE ALWAYS GLAD AT THE DEATH OF AN-
OTHER.

There is no one so fortunate to whom at his death there are not some who are pleased at the calamity that has happened.

BE PREPARED TO DIE AT ANY MOMENT. What a soul that is which is ready, if at any moment it must be separated from the body, and ready either to be extinguished or dispersed or

continue to exist! but so that this readiness comes from a man's own judgment, not from mere obstinacy, as with the Christians, but considerately and with dignity, and in a way to persuade another, without tragic show.

THE VOICE TO BE WRITTEN ON THE FOREHEAD.

The voice ought to be clearly written on the forehead; according as a man's character is, he shows it forthwith in his eyes, just as he who is beloved reads everything in the eyes of the lover. So, also, ought the upright and good man to be like the strong-smelling goat, so that the byConsider, in a word, how all things, such as they stander, as soon as he comes near, should perceive are now, were so formerly, and consider that they him, whether he wills it or not. But the affectawill be so again; and place before thy eyes whole tion of honesty is like a crooked stick. Nothing dramas and stages of the same kind, whatever is more disgraceful than a wolfish friendship. Avoid this most of all. The good, simple, and bethou hast become acquainted with from thy own experience or from the history of olden times-nevolent, show these feelings in the eyes, and such as the whole court of Hadrian, and the whole there is no concealment of them. court of Antoninus, and the whole court of Philip, Alexander, and Croesus, for all these were such dramas as we see at present, only with different actors.

EVERYTHING LIES NAKED BEFORE GOD.

God sees the minds of all stripped bare of their bodily coverings and pollutions.

MAN'S SELF-LOVE.

I have often wondered how every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.

WHERE ARE NOW MEN OF THE GREATEST FAME?

Bring always to thy remembrance that those who have made great complaints about anything, those who have been most remarkable by the greatest fame, or misfortunes, or enmities, or fortunes of any kind; then consider, where are they all now? Smoke and ash and a tale, or not even a tale.

APOLLODORUS.

FLOURISHED B.C. 290.

APOLLODORUS, a native of Gela, in Sicily, flourished between B.C. 300-260. He was a celebrated comic poet, of whose poetry some fragments have been preserved.

A PLEASANT LIFE.

It is pleasant to lead an idle life; it is a happy and delightful life if it be with other idle people: with beasts and apes one ought to be an ape. O *the misery of life!

WHEN NIGHT APPEARS TO BE LONG.

For to those overwhelmed in sorrow and grief every night is sure to appear long.

FORTUNE.

Fortune is a sore, sore thing; but we must bear it in a certain way, as a burden.

TIME.

For if thou takest time into thy affairs, it will allay and arrange all things.

ARATUS.

FLOURISHED B.C. 270.

ARATUS, a Greek poet, of Soli, in Cilicia, flourished B.C. 270, in the reign of Ptolemy Philadel phus, and was the contemporary of Theocritus, by whom he is spoken of in honorable terms (vi. 1-45). Aratus spent much of his time at the court of Antigonus Gonatas, B.C. 282–239. He was the author of a work entitled "Phænomena,” which has been preserved, and which is a description of the heavens in hexameter verse. It is a poem of 732 lines, and contains rather a poetical than scientific account of the appearances in the heavens. It seems to have been a great favorite with the Romans, as it was frequently translated into Latin verse. Cicero, in his youth, employed himself in translating it, but it adds little to the reputation of the orator. Another work of Aratus which we possess is entitled "Diosemeia," prognostics of the weather, which was also translated by Cicero.

WE ARE THE OFFSPRING OF GOD.

Let us begin our song from Jupiter; let us never leave his name unuttered; all paths, all HOW DEATH APPEARS IN DIFFERENT STAGES OF haunts of men are full of Jove, the sea and heav

LIFE.

When I was a young man, I pitied those who were carried off prematurely; but now when I see the funeral of the old, I weep, for this is my concern, the other was not.

THE HABITS OF THE OLD.

Do not despise, Philinus, the habits of the old, to which, if thou reachest old age, thou wilt be subject. But we, fathers, are greatly inferior in this. If a father does not act kindly, you reproach him in some such language as this-"Hast thou never been young?" And it is not possible for the old to say to his son, if he acts imprudently,

"Hast thou never been old ?"

FELLOW-SUFFERERS.

This is according to nature; every one in misfortune grieves most pleasantly in company with those who are suffering in the same way.

NEVER DESPAIR.

Men, it is not right for him who is in misfortune to despair, but always to expect better fortune.

WHO IS HAPPY?

For it is not right to call the man who possesses much riches happy, but the man who is not in grief.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

ARCHIPPUS.

FLOURISHED B.C. 415.

A tricking, quibbling, double-dealing knave;
A prating, pettifogging limb-o'-th'-law;
A sly old fox, a perjurer, a hang-dog,

ARCHIPPUS, an Athenian comic poet of the old A ragamuffin made of shreds and patches, comedy, gained a single prize, B.C. 415.

THE SEA.

The leavings of a dunghill. Let 'em rail,
Yea, marry, let 'em turn my guts to fiddle-strings,

How sweet it is, mother, to see the sea from May my bread be my poison, if I care!
the land, when we are not sailing!

ARISTOPHANES.

BORN B.C. 444-DIED ABOUT B.C. 380. ARISTOPHANES, the only writer of the old comedy of whom any entire works are left, was son of Euphorion, an Athenian. Of his private history we know nothing, except that he was fond of pleasure, and spent much of his time in drinking and the society of the witty. There are eleven of his plays still remaining. The period during which he exhibited his plays was one of the most brilliant, and at the same time the most unfortunate, that Athens ever witnessed. It was in the fourth year of the Peloponnesian War, B.C. 427, that he brought on the stage his first play, and for the long period of thirty years he continued to produce a series of caricatures on the leading men of the day, which give us more insight into the private history of the times than we could have got from any other source. The evils of war, the folly of his countrymen in being led by loud-mouthed demagogues, the danger of an education in which scepticism took the place of religion, and the excessive love for litigation, to which the Athenians were addicted, are the suband jects against which he inveighs, with a power a boldness which show him to have been an honest, Plato called though not always a wise, patriot. the soul of Aristophanes a temple for the Graces, and has introduced him into his "Symposium." His lyrical powers were of a high order, as may be seen in many of his choruses, where his fancy takes the widest range: frogs chant choruses, and the grunt of a pig is formed into an iambic verse. The coarseness and indecency which are mixed up with some of his finest passages must be referred more to the age in which he lived than to his own mind.

A ROGUE.

MEMORY OF TWO SORTS.

Oh! as for that,

My memory is of two sorts, long and short:
With them who owe me aught it never fails;
My creditors, indeed, complain of it
As mainly apt to leak and lose its reckoning.

OLD AGE A SECOND CHILDHOOD.

But I would say, in reply, that old men are boys
twice over.

And grant they were, the proverb's in your teeth,
Which says old age is but a second childhood.

WE ARE THE CAUSE OF MISFORTUNES TO OUR

SELVES.

Nay, rather, thou art thyself the cause of these things to thyself, having had recourse to wicked courses.

Evil events from evil causes spring,
And what you suffer flows from what you've done.

EVERYTHING SUBSERVIENT TO RICHES.

And by Jove, if there be anything grand, beautiful, or pleasing to men, it is through thee (riches); for all things are subservient to riches.

SELFISHNESS OF MANKIND.

But to me it is a prodigy, that a man, who hath any good luck, should send for his friends to share it. Surely he hath done a very unfashionable thing.

NO MAN RIGHTEOUS.

I know.... that there is no man truly honest; we are none of us above the influence of gain. ADVANtage of poveRTY TO THE HUMAN RACE.

Should this which you long for be accomplished, I say it would not be conducive to your happiness; for should Plutus recover his sight, and distribute his favors equally, no man would trouble himself with the theory of any art, nor with the exercise of any craft; and if these two should once disapIf I get clear of my debts, I care not though pear, who afterwards will become a brasier, a men call me bold, glib of tongue, audacious, im- shipwright, a tailor, a wheelwright, a shoemaker, pudent, shameless, a fabricator of falsehoods, in- a brickmaker, a dyer, or a skinner? Or who will ventor of words, practised in lawsuits, a law tab-plough up the bowels of the earth, in order to let, a rattle, a fox, a sharper, a slippery knave, a reap the fruits of Ceres, if it was once possible for dissembler, a slippery fellow, an impostor, a you to live with the neglect of all these things? rogue that deserves the cat-o'-nine-tails, a blackguard, a twister, a troublesome fellow, a licker-up of hashes. If they call me all this, when they meet me, they may do so if they please.

So that I may but fob my creditors,
Let the world talk; I care not though it call me
A bold-faced, loud-tongued, overbearing bully;
A shameless, vile, prevaricating cheat;

POVERTY IS SISTER OF BEGGARY.

Therefore we say, certainly, that poverty is sister of beggary.

THE EFFECT OF POVERTY AND RICHES ON MAN.

And knowing that I (Poverty) furnish men better than Plutus (Riches) both in mind and body;

for with him they are gouty in feet, pot-bellied, | Of a divided city, by corruption
thick-legged, and extravagantly fat; but with me
they are thin and wasp-like, and annoying to their
enemies.

TO CONVINCE AGAINST OUR WILL.

Is led away from th' even path of justice;— Whoe'er betrays the fortress he commands, Gives up his ship, or from Ægina sends Forbidden stores, as late that vile collector, Shameless Thorycio, did to Epidaurus;

For thou shalt not convince me, even if thou Whoe'er persuades another to supply shouldst convince me.

Gay says

"Convince a man against his will,

He's of the same opinion still."

A MAN'S COUNTRY WHERE HE LIVES BEST.

The enemy with money for their fleet.

TORTURE.

In every way, by tying him to a ladder, by hang ing, by scourging with a whip, by flaying, by racking, and besides by pouring vinegar into his

That is every man's country, where he lives best. nostrils, by heaping bricks upon him, and in every

[ocr errors][merged small]

After that the breath of flutes shall encompass thee, and thou shalt see a most beautiful light, as here, and myrtle groves, and happy bands of men and women, and much clapping of hands.

Onward the dulcet harmony of flutes Shall breathe around thee, while thou shalt behold Light's gayest beams, such as we here enjoy, And myrtle groves, and troops of either sex Moving in mystic choruses, and marking With plausive hands their holy ecstasy.

DEBARRING THE PROFANE FROM THE SACRED MYSTERIES.

It is right that he should abstain from ill-omened words, and retire from our choirs, whoever is unskilled in such words, or is not pure in mind, and has neither seen nor cultivated with dances the orgies of the noble Muses, and has not been initiated in the Bacchanalian orgies of the tongue of

Cratinus, the bull-eater, or takes pleasure in buffoonish verses, exciting buffoonery at an improper time, or does not repress hateful sedition, and is not kind to the citizens, but, desirous of his private advantage, excites and blows it up; or, when the commonwealth is tempest-tossed, being a magistrate, yields to bribes, or betrays a garrison, or ships or imports from Ægina forbidden goods, being another Thorycion, a vile collector of tolls, sending across to Epidaurus oar-paddings, sailcloth and pitch, or who persuades any one to supply money for the ships of the enemy.

Hushed be each lawless tongue, and, ye profane,
Ye uninitiated, from our mysteries

Far off retire! Whoe'er a bosom boasts not
Pure and unsullied, nor has ever learned
To worship at the Muses' hallowed shrine,
Or lead in sportive dance their votaries,
Nor in Cratinus' lofty sounding style

Has formed his tongue to Bacchus' praise;-whoe'er

Delights in flattery's unseemly language;-
Who strives not to allay the rising storm
That threats the public weal, nor cultivates
The sweets of private friendship, but foments
Intestine discord, blows the rancorous flame
Of enmity 'twixt man and man, to serve
Some sordid purpose of his narow soul;-
Whoe'er intrusted with the government

[blocks in formation]
« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »