But Juvenal is not always bitter, nor always angry. His indignation is never absent, but takes at times a graver and a nobler tone. At times he preaches virtue directly, instead of doing so indirectly through the denunciation of vice. He has no new secret of morality to reveal, no fresh lights to throw upon problems of conduct; his advice is obvious and straightforward; neither in form nor matter is there anything paradoxical. He was no student of philosophy,[730] though naturally familiar with the more important philosophic creeds and disposed by temperament to fall in with the views of the stern Stoic school. The conclusion of the tenth satire quoted above owes much to the Stoics. 'Leave the ordering of your fortunes to the powers above. Man is dearer to them than to himself. The wise man is free from all desire, all anger and all fear of death.'[731] 'Revenge is an unworthy and degrading passion.'[732] 'Fate[733] and the revolution[734] of the stars in heaven rule all with unchanging law.' All these maxims have their counterpart in the Stoic creed. But there is no need of the philosophy of the schools to guide man to the paths of virtue. numquam aliud natura, aliud sapientia dicit (xiv. 321). Nature and wisdom never are at strife. GIFFORD. Philosophy has its value, but the good man is no less good for not being a philosopher: magna quidem, sacris quae dat praecepta libellis, victrix fortunae sapientia, ducimus autem hos quoque felices, qui ferre incommoda vitae nec iactare iugum vita didicere magistra (xiii. 19). Wisdom, I know, contains a sovereign charm, To vanquish fortune or at least disarm: Blest they who walk in her unerring rule! Nor those unblest who, tutored in life's school, Have learned of old experience to submit, And lightly bear the yoke they cannot quit. GIFFORD. He agrees with the Stoics just because their practical teaching harmonizes so entirely with the old _virtus Romana_, that is his ideal. No more profound are his religious views: he hates the alien cults that work as insidious poison in the life of Rome; he rejects the picturesque legends of the afterworld, bred of the fertile imagination of the Greeks. But he is no unbeliever: separat hoc nos a grege mutorum, atque ideo venerabile soli sortiti ingenium divinorumque capaces atque exercendis pariendisque artibus apti sensum a caelesti demissum traximus arce, cuius egent prona et terram spectantia. mundi principio indulsit communis conditor illis tantum animas, nobis animum quoque, mutuus ut nos adfectus petere auxilium et praestare iuberet (xv. 142).