Cure of the Greek Maladies 1 part 16/16

"Most gladly indeed have I escaped them, as one who has fled some raging and savage master." Here, then, he discoursed in this way concerning shameful pleasure;

but in the Gorgias, concerning justice and injustice, he speaks thus:

"For it is difficult, Callicles, and worthy of much praise, when one has come into great power to do wrong, to live justly;"

"but few become such men."

"Since both here and elsewhere there have been, and, I think, there will be, men noble and good in this virtue, of dealing justly with whatever someone entrusts to them." And once more:

"But amid so many arguments, while many others are refuted, this argument alone stands firm: that one must beware of doing wrong rather than of being wronged, and that above all a man must strive not to seem to be good, but to be good, both in private and in public." And these arguments too Socrates again brought forward to Crito;

for after many other things he added these too:

"— So then, one must not even requite wrong for wrong, as the many think, since one must in no way do wrong."

"— But what then? Must one do harm, Crito, or not? — Surely one must not, Socrates."

"— For to do evil to men differs in no way from doing wrong."

"— Therefore one must neither requite wrong nor do evil to any human being, even if one should suffer anything whatever from them." Such, then, was the teaching that Socrates and Plato gave concerning injustice and justice, truly praiseworthy and rational and in accord with human nature;

for nature has instructed all human beings in ethical learning.

Whence not only Socrates and Plato and Aristides the son of Lysimachus and certain others of the Greeks abhorred the unjust life, but many also of the barbarians.

For Hellanicus too, in his Histories, said that the Hyperboreans dwell beyond the Rhipaean mountains and practice justice, not eating flesh, but using tree-fruits.

And others relate that the Brahmans pass their lives in the forests, covering their bodies with leaves.

And they say that Anacharsis the Scythian also became a philosopher;

and so greatly did the love of philosophy inflame him that he became most renowned and celebrated among all.

For not only when awake did he struggle against the passions of the soul, but even while sleeping he displayed the signs of his self-control;

for he was accustomed to hold his privy parts with his left hand, and to keep his lips together with his right, thereby somehow indicating that far greater is the contest of the tongue, and that it needs greater aid for safety.

And Hermippus of Berytus says that Chiron the Centaur became a teacher of justice, and Homer too called him the most just of the Centaurs.

It is therefore quite fitting to marvel neither at Hesiod, who says the road of virtue is rough and steep and hard to travel, nor at Simonides, who said that Virtue dwells upon rocks hard to climb. For the things that Homer attested concerning Chiron and the Mare-milkers, and the things that Anacharsis the Scythian pursued in deed, these the praised poets exhorted in word.

He said that to take pleasure is better than to be mad;

wherefore he also exhorts his disciples never to stretch out even a finger for the sake of pleasure.

And they say that, when someone reproached what was being done and said:

"You scoundrel, if only I could light upon a man." So unrestrainedly did he indulge in lust.

Crates the Theban emulated this man's life and crowned virtue with many encomiums;

for indeed this saying is his own:

"Unenslaved and unbending to slavish pleasure, they love an immortal kingdom and freedom."

This man was accustomed to say that for the impulse toward sexual matters the poultice is hunger, and if not that, then the noose.

But when the passion rose up against him, he publicly married Hipparchia of Maroneia and consummated the "dog-wedding" in the Stoa Poikile, bidding a long farewell to the loftiness of his words.

And Aristippus the Cyrenaic too, when reproached because he frequently consorted with the courtesan of Corinth, used to say, "I possess Lais, and am not possessed by her." And the Peripatetics too in word extolled virtue, but in deed glorified pleasure;

and these things about them are not others' accusations, but they themselves write concerning their own teacher.

For Aristocles the Peripatetic somewhere said that Lycon the Pythagorean stated concerning Aristotle that, having bathed in warm oil, he afterwards sold off this oil;

and that, when he was departing to Chalcis, he said that the customs officers, searching the ship, found in it seventy-four bronze dishes;

and that certain others said he had possessed three hundred dishes.

And I think they are not altogether lying;

for in these things indeed that man defined happiness.

For he was accustomed to say that no one becomes happy in any other way than through the body's good condition and an abundance of external things, without which virtue is of no benefit at all.

And this Atticus the Platonist clearly showed in what he writes against Aristotle.

The things said against him, then, his own words confirm.

But Plato teaches the directly opposite.

For in the third book of the Republic he bids us care for the body for the sake of the soul's harmony, through which it is possible both to live and to live rightly, proclaiming the heralding of the truth.

This the divine apostle also exhorts, saying:

"The night is far spent, and the day is at hand."

"Let us therefore put off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light;"

"let us walk becomingly as in the day, not in revellings and drunkenness, not in chamberings and licentiousness, not in strife and jealousy;"

"but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts." For one ought not to render it so much attendance that the soul becomes wanton, but in order that it may serve and work together and follow the soul's biddings.

Plato, then, has in these things agreed with our teachers, having enjoined that the necessary care be given to the body.

And he showed also how the passion of desire begins and grows;

"For we," he said, "might perhaps not unreasonably say that sight initiates love, hope increases the passion, memory nourishes it, and habit preserves it." And this same thing he said also concerning virtue:

"For of every plant," he said, "the first shoot, when well directed toward the virtue of its own nature, is most decisive in setting upon it the fitting end." And Socrates too bade us guard against the things that persuade us to eat when not hungry and to drink when not thirsty, and against the glances and kisses of beautiful persons, as being apt to inject a venom worse than that of scorpions and spiders.

But these were merely words, stripped bare of deeds.

For indeed, for the sake of the young and the beautiful, he was accustomed to frequent the gymnasia and to feast his eyes with the evil spectacle.

And the Philebus and the Phaedrus and the Rival Lovers and the Charmides and many other dialogues bear witness, containing such narratives.

...he wrote, but I, out of regard for Socrates, will not consent to relate;

such absurdity and drunken folly of Socrates, and such mischief to those prone to stumbling, do those discourses contain in that dialogue.

And he said that he passed the evening and stayed up all night drinking, and when the others had already given up and welcomed sleep, he remained awake drinking and discoursing in the meantime—nothing profitable, but the kinds of things that suited Alcibiades and Aristophanes and the other revellers.

And Porphyry too, who composed the Philosophical History, first said that he was irascible and quick-tempered, using Aristoxenus as witness, who had written the life of Socrates.

For he said that he had never met anyone more persuasive than that man;

such was his voice and his mouth and the character that appeared in him, and in addition to all that has been said, the distinctiveness of his appearance.

But this was so when he was not angry;

and whenever he was seized by this passion, the unseemliness was terrible;

for he refrained from no name nor from any deed.

And having gone through other such things, he shows him to have been enslaved also to sensual indulgences;

[saying] that toward the use of sexual pleasures he was rather vehement, though injustice was not present in it;

for he consorted only either with wedded wives or with common women.

And [he says] that he took Xanthippe, who clung to him, from whom Lamprocles was born;

and that Myrto was wedded [to him], from whom came Sophroniscus and Menexenus.

And these women, joining battle with one another, whenever they ceased, would rush upon Socrates, because he never prevented them when they fought, but laughed when he saw them fighting both with each other and with him.

And he says that in conversations he was at times contentious and abusive and insolent. These things too concerning Socrates Porphyry said.

And it was said concerning him that, when a boy, he did not live well nor in an orderly manner.

For first they say that he persisted in disobeying his father, and whenever [his father] bade him take the tools of the craft and go anywhere whatsoever, he, neglecting the command, would run around to wherever it seemed good to him.

And [they say that] already around his seventeenth year Archelaus the pupil of Anaxagoras approached him, declaring himself to be a lover;

and that Socrates did not reject the encounter and intimacy with Archelaus, but spent many years with him;

and that thus he was turned by Archelaus toward philosophy. Then, after a little:

And among the things for which Socrates was censured were these too: that he pushed his way into crowds and held his discussions by the tables [of the money-changers] and by the Herms. These things concerning Socrates Porphyry said, and certain others which I have willingly passed over;

from which it is possible to learn that those men praised virtue in words, but embraced pleasure and submitted to being enslaved to the passions.

For if indeed, according to Porphyry, he was impulsive toward sexual matters and, consorting with two women at the same time, took no satiety, but also unrestrainedly used common women, and, according to Plato, welcomed the sight of the young men stripped in the wrestling-schools, and was hot-tempered and could scarcely restrain his anger as it darted up, and had an abusive and unbridled tongue—what sort of philosophy, then, was he pursuing? And that some of the ancients accuse Plato too of having done many things unworthy of philosophy, hear Xenophon saying in his letter to Aeschines:

"For they fell in love with Egypt and with the prodigious wisdom of Pythagoras;"

"For, leaving Athens, he kept company with that man, enjoying Syracusan luxury, and after that man's death, with that man's son."

"and afterwards he sold him too, like a barbarian slave."

And Plutarch too says that he carried olive oil into Egypt for the sake of trade.

But nevertheless, even while hearing such censures, we admire the things rightly said by him and the benefit from them, and we deem you also worthy to gather them.

For indeed we hear that there have also been praiseworthy women among the Greeks.

For Lysidice, as they say, used to bathe without even taking off her little tunic, on account of her excess of modesty.

And Philotera, going down into the bathing-tub, would little by little uncover the part of her body that was covered by the water, drawing up her tunic a little at a time;

and again, as she came up, she would clothe herself in like manner.

And Theano the Pythagorean, when someone gazed at her and said:

"A beautiful forearm," replied, "but not public property."

"How many days after [intercourse with] her husband does a woman go down to the Thesmophorion?" "From her own husband," she said, "at once; but from another's, never." These things, and as many as are such, we both praise and declare worthy of philosophy.

And we approve of Plato for having ordained marriage for the good and for having called it a device of immortality and the continuance of the race;

For having defined pleasure as the end, they utterly rejected the things that bring cares and certain unpleasantnesses.

But those of the [Stoic] Porch trod a certain middle road;

for they yoked marriage and child-bearing among the things indifferent.

But the divine words extol the purity that is devised for the sake of philosophy, as procuring a life free from cares;

and they legislate temperate marriage, as both increasing the race and freeing from lust those who wish to be temperate;

but fornication and the rest of licentiousness they denounce as swinish;

"For marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled," says the divine apostle;

"but fornicators and adulterers God will judge." And again:

"I say to the unmarried and to the widows:"

"it is good for them if they remain even as I am;"

"but if they do not have self-control, let them marry." And elsewhere:

"But fornication and all uncleanness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints." And elsewhere:

"Lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau." Our teachers, then, have laid down the law for the life befitting rational beings;

but the best of the philosophers, even they, were enslaved to pleasures and wrote laws that teach licentiousness;

for such are Plato's laws concerning marriages and pederasty.

And moreover, concerning friendship Hippodamus the Pythagorean wrote thus:

"One [kind] is from knowledge of the gods, another from the provision of human beings, and another from the pleasure of animals." But the Master Christ in the sacred Gospels says:

"No one can show greater love than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." And teaching the most perfect things, He also bade us love our enemies;

but he who was schooled in the Pythagorean tetractys defined human friendship as being established by provision.

And not only is this argument out of tune, but altogether without foundation.

For we find many who have become benefactors of their enemies;

and many who, having been treated well by some, became most ungrateful toward their benefactors.

Friendship, then, is not the offspring of provision, but provision is the fruit of friendship.

Having again examined these things side by side, gentlemen, and having understood how great is the gulf between things divine and things human, travel by way of those [human things], as by certain elements, toward the perfection of these [divine things], and do not "make excuses with pretexts in sins," as the psalmody of the Spirit says.

For whenever we demonstrate that the evangelical laws are far loftier than Greek philosophy, then you, on the one hand, praise the laws, but on the other hand, you boldly bring forward into the open those who transgress them, and through those men you attempt to slander the laws.

But one ought to censure those men, and not to accuse the laws.

...nor do we slander gold because of the brass-alloyed [counterfeit] and prefer the unadulterated, nor do we mock the true purple because of the false, nor do we accuse [the art] because of the unskilled painters and the skilled, nor do we hate the diligent because of the wicked men, nor, if we should find some unskilled physician, do we forthwith reject the medical art; but among painters and physicians, and indeed also among cobblers and smiths and goldsmiths, we admire the best, while those who do not practice the art accurately we are accustomed to mock;

but the arts themselves, even if we should find no one skilled, we do not endure to slander.

For it is among the most absurd things, on account of those whose eyes are blind, to disparage even the faculty of sight itself as useless, and on account of those who are tongue-tied, to accuse the organs of speech as unnecessary, and on account of stopped-up ears, to call the faculty of hearing superfluous.

Thus truly it is wretched and unjust, on account of those who transgress the laws, to accuse the laws themselves as well, and [to accuse] those who have been zealous to keep them.

For neither, if some carpenter should straighten the chalk-line according to rule, but, using the adze contrary to rule, should ruin the marks of the ink, either by cutting off more of the wood within the line or by leaving superfluous parts on the outside—is the chalk-line, which shows the straight, to be blamed;

for the fault is of the carpenter's lack of skill.

Therefore the laws hold the rank of a certain chalk-line and rule and square;

but of those who use them, some most excellently direct their own life, while others, choosing the easiest things instead of the best, walk outside the straightness of these.

Therefore these men are to be censured, but the laws are to be praised.

For neither, if some excellent physician should order the sick man to partake of some things, but to abstain wholly from others, and then that man, caring little for the medical prescriptions, should prefer pleasure to the cure, and by eating or drinking the forbidden things should aggravate the disease—do we blame the physician as a plotter against him.

For the disease was aggravated out of the sick man's lack of self-control, not out of the foresight of the one who counseled him.

Having reckoned up these things, then, and as many as are similar to them, extol the lawgiver of the saving laws, and marvel at the profitableness and helpfulness of the laws themselves;

and like certain spectators of praiseworthy contests, proclaim the guardians of these laws as victors, but do not bring forth the same verdict against the transgressors.

For not all transgress with an equal intent.

For we human beings commit many faults even contrary to our intention;

and these the laws themselves also call involuntary.

For indeed, someone hurling a stone at a dog or at something else missed it, but killed a man;

for such mishaps Herodotus too recounts.

And often someone, holding an axe and cutting wood, involuntarily hurled the iron at some passer-by.

To these and such-like deeds, as being involuntary, the laws grant pardon.

And voluntary deeds too have no small difference among them.

For it is not the same thing for someone, provoked by some anger and rage, to strike his neighbor and dispatch him to death—not having premeditated this nor struck with this end in view—and to contrive death out of plotting and ambush and forethought;

for the one was of the incontinence of anger, but the other of the utmost wickedness;

and the one was not wholly of the intention, but the other wholly so.

So also into the sins of sensual indulgence not all human beings fall in like manner;

but some, least of all busying themselves [about it], are nonetheless pierced by the comeliness of bodies, and there are times when they even catch sight of it suddenly and are enslaved to the passion, the reason being displaced from its rule;

while others make it their [whole] life to feast their eyes upon such a spectacle.

And some do not even freely enjoy food or drink, yet nonetheless are defeated in the wrestling, since they are unwilling to wrestle skillfully;

while others are gorged and live luxuriously and devise every kind of indulgence and inflame their other appetites with all manner of contrivances, and moreover are vexed when these are quenched.

Since, then, so great is the difference among those who transgress, one ought not to be harsh with all alike, but to abhor those who manifestly embrace the swinish life, while to the others one ought both to counsel and exhort and extend a hand and carefully tend them and apply the medicines of health;

but as for those, if indeed they persist in living bestially, let us both lament them while they are alive, and, when they have died, apply to them the epitaph of Sardanapalus.

For on his tomb there had been inscribed:

"So much I have as I have eaten, and what wantonness I worked, and what delights I enjoyed in love; but the many and blessed things are all left behind, for I too am ashes, though I reigned over great Ninus [Nineveh]."

But indeed, those who wrote this inscribed it falsely.

For the deceased does not possess the things he ate and drank, but those have passed into foul corruption;

rather, he possesses only the stench of his lawless life, which continually pains and grieves the soul, since it is conscious to itself of the worst deeds and remembers the things it lawlessly did.

This, gentlemen, is the twelfth discourse I have brought to you, and I have shown what the philosophers of the Greeks thought concerning God and matter and creation, and indeed also concerning virtue and vice, and what things the divine words have taught us, and how all their teachings have been quenched and handed over to the darkness of oblivion, while ours flourish and bloom and have in every city and country many myriads of hearers and teachers, who do not possess the Platonic eloquence, but offer the healing of the truth;

and [I have shown] that the error of the falsely-named gods has been driven out, while the doctrines of our Savior are being proclaimed.

For this indeed Porphyry too said, in the things he wrote against us:

"And now," he says, "they marvel that for so many years the plague has gripped the city, while there is no longer any visitation of Asclepius and of the other gods;"

"for since Jesus is honored, no one has perceived any public benefit from the gods." These things did Porphyry, the most hateful to us of all men, say, and openly confessed that Jesus, being believed in, made the gods vanish away, and that after the cross and the saving Passion neither Asclepius nor any other of the so-called gods any longer deceives men.

For the light, having risen, sent their whole swarm, like so many bats, off into the darkness.

Of this ray I deem you also worthy to partake.

For it was for this very reason that I undertook the labor, and, having gathered as it were certain herbs from every quarter, I prepared for you the remedy that wards off evil.