Furthermore, the young man is not altogether to neglect names themselves when he meets with them; though he is not obliged to give much heed to such idle descants as those of Cleanthes, who, while he professeth himself an interpreter, plays the trifler, as in these passages of Homer: Ζεῦ πάτερ Ἴδηθεν μεδέων, and Ζεῦ ἄνα Δωδωναῖε.[73] For he will needs read the last two of these words joined into one, and make them ἀναδωδωναῖε; for that the air evaporated from the earth by exhalation (ἀνάδοσις) is so called. Yea, and Chrysippus too, though he does not so trifle, yet is very jejune, while he hunts after improbable etymologies. As when he will need force the words εὐρύοπα Κρονίδην to import Jupiter’s excellent faculty in speaking and powerfulness to persuade thereby. But such things as these are fitter to be left to the examination of grammarians; and we are rather to insist upon such passages as are both profitable and persuasive. Such, for instance, as these:— My early youth was bred to martial pains, My soul impels me to the embattled plains! How skill’d he was in each obliging art; The mildest manners, and the gentlest heart.[74] For while the author tells us that fortitude may be taught, and that an obliging and graceful way of conversing with others is to be gotten by art and the use of reason, he exhorts us not to neglect the improvement of ourselves, but by observing our teachers’ instructions to learn a becoming carriage, as knowing that clownishness and cowardice argue ill-breeding and ignorance. And very suitable to what hath been said is that which is said of Jupiter and Neptune:— Gods of one source, of one ethereal race, Alike divine, and heaven their native place; But Jove the greater; first born of the skies, And more than men or Gods supremely wise.[75] For the poet therein pronounceth wisdom to be the most divine and royal quality of all; as placing therein the greatest excellency of Jupiter himself, and judging all virtues else to be necessarily consequent thereunto. We are also to accustom a young man attentively to hear such things as these:— Urge him with truth to frame his fair replies And sure he will, for wisdom never lies: The praise of wisdom, in thy youth obtain’d, An act so rash, Antilochus, has stain’d: Say, is it just, my friend, that Hector’s ear From such a warrior such a speech should hear? I deemed thee once the wisest of thy kind, But ill this insult suits a prudent mind.[76] These speeches teach us that it is beneath wise men to lie or to deal otherwise than fairly, even in games, or to blame other men without just cause. And when the poet attributes Pindarus’s violation of the truce to his folly, he withal declares his judgment that a wise man will not be guilty of an unjust action. The like may we also infer concerning continence, taking our ground for it from these passages:—