Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras, or Pythagoric Life: Accompanied by Fragments of the Ethical Writings of certain Pythagoreans in the Doric dialect; and a collection of Pythagoric Sentences from Stobaeus and others, which are omitted by Gale in his Opuscula Mythologica, and have not been noticed by any editorIamblichus
Philosophy
Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras, or Pythagoric Life: Accompanied by Fragments of the Ethical Writings of certain Pythagoreans in the Doric dialect; and a collection of Pythagoric Sentences from Stobaeus and others, which are omitted by Gale in his Opuscula Mythologica, and have not been noticed by any editor
Iamblichus
Ethics, Ancient; Philosophers -- Greece -- Biography; Philosophy, Ancient; Pythagoras; Pythagoras and Pythagorean school
prudence and temperance, being satisfied with our present circumstances,
and not aspiring after many things. For men who procure for themselves a
great abundance [of external goods], do not consider that the enjoyment
of them terminates with the present life. We ought therefore to use the
goods that are present; and by the assistance of the beautiful and
venerable things of which philosophy is the source, we shall be
liberated from the insatiable desire of depraved possessions.
FROM
ARCHYTAS,
IN HIS TREATISE CONCERNING
THE GOOD AND HAPPY MAN.
In the first place, it is requisite to know this, that the good man is
not immediately happy from necessity; but that this is the case with the
man who is both happy and good. For the happy man obtains both praise
and the predication of blessedness; but the good man far as he is good
obtains praise alone. The praise also arises from virtue; but the
predication of blessedness from good fortune. And the worthy man,
indeed, becomes such from the goods which he possesses; but the happy
man is sometimes deprived of his felicity. For the power of virtue is
perfectly free, but that of felicity is subject to restraint. For
long-continued diseases of the body, and deprivations of the senses,
cause the florishing condition of felicity to waste away. God, however,
differs from a good man in this, that God indeed not only possesses
virtue genuine and purified from every mortal passion, but his power
also is unwearied and unrestrained, as being adapted to the most
venerable and magnificent production of eternal works. Man indeed, by
the mortal condition of his nature, not only enjoys this power and this
virtue in a less degree; but sometimes through the want of symmetry[60]
in the goods which he possesses, or through powerful custom, or a
depraved nature, or through many other causes, he is unable to possess
in the extreme a good which is perfectly true.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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