Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"Plutarch
Philosophy
Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"
Plutarch
Classical literature; Essays; Ethics; Philosophy
But the Stoics’ Lapithes, as if they had carved him out of the
very adamantine matter of impassibility itself, though he is not
invulnerable, nor exempt from either sickness or pain, yet remains
fearless, regretless, invincible, and unconstrainable in the midst
of wounds, dolors, and torments, and in the very subversions of the
walls of his native city, and other such like great calamities. Again,
Pindar’s Caeneus is not wounded when struck; but the Stoics’ wise
man is not detained when shut up in a prison, suffers no compulsion
by being thrown down a precipice, is not tortured when on the rack,
takes no hurt by being maimed, and when he catches a fall in wrestling
he is still unconquered; when he is encompassed with a rampire,
he is not besieged; and when sold by his enemies, he is still not
made a prisoner. The wonderful man is like to those ships that have
inscribed upon them A PROSPEROUS VOYAGE, or PROTECTING
PROVIDENCE, or A PRESERVATIVE AGAINST DANGERS, and yet
for all that endure storms, and are miserably shattered and overturned.
2. Euripides’s Iolaus of a feeble, superannuated old man, by means of
a certain prayer, became on a sudden youthful and strong for battle;
but the Stoics’ wise man was yesterday most detestable and the worst of
villains, but to-day is changed on a sudden into a state of virtue, and
is become of a wrinkled, pale fellow, and, as Aeschylus speaks,
Of an old sickly wretch with stitch in’s back,
Distent with rending pains as on a rack,
a gallant, god-like, and beauteous person.
3. The Goddess Minerva took from Ulysses his wrinkles, baldness,
and deformity, to make him appear a handsome man. But these men’s
wise man, though old age quits not his body, but contrariwise still
lays on and heaps more upon it, though he remains (for instance)
hump-backed, toothless, one-eyed, is yet neither deformed, disfigured,
nor ill-favored. For as beetles are said to relinquish perfumes and to
pursue after ill scents; so Stoical love, having used itself to the
most foul and deformed persons, if by means of philosophy they change
into good form and comeliness, becomes presently disgusted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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