[12] Now the bee, in accordance with nature’s laws, discovers amid the most pungent flowers and the roughest thorns the smoothest and most palatable honey; so children, if they be rightly nurtured amid poetry, will in some way or other learn to draw some wholesome and profitable doctrine even from passages that are suspect of what is base and improper. For example, Agamemnon is suspected of having, for a bribe, released from service in the army the rich man who made him a present of the mare Aetha, “Gift so he fare not with him to Troy where the wind never ceaseth, But enjoy himself at home; for wealth in abundance Zeus had bestowed upon him.[187] ” But, as Aristotle [188] observes, he did quite right in preferring a good mare to a man of that type. For a coward, and a weakling, made dissolute by wealth and soft living, is not, I swear, worth a dog or even an ass. Again, it appears most shameful in Thetis [189] when she incites her son to pleasures and reminds him of love. But even there we must contrast Achilles’ mastery of himself, that although he is in love with Briseis, who has come back to him, and although he knows that the end of his life is near, yet he does not make haste to enjoy love’s pleasures, nor, like most men, mourn for his friend by inactivity and omission of his duties, but as he refrains from such pleasures because of his grief, so he bestirs himself in the business of his command. Again, Archilochus cannot be commended, because while grieving over his sister’s husband, who was lost at sea, he is minded to fight against his grief by means of wine and amusement; he has, however, alleged a cause that has some appearance of reason, “By my tears I shall not cure it, nor worse make it By pursuing joys, yea, and festivities.[190] ” For if he thought that he should not make matters “worse by pursuing joys, yea, and festivities,” how shall our present condition be any the worse if we engage in the study of philosophy or take part in public life, if we go out to the market-place or down to the Academy, or if we pursue our farming? Wherefore the corrected versions which Cleanthes and Antisthenes employed are themselves not without value. Antisthenes, observing that the Athenians had raised an uproar in the theatre at the line, “What’s shameful if its doer think not so? [191] ” at once interpolated, “A shame’s a shame, though one think so or no” and Cleanthes, taking the lines about riches, “Give to your friends, and when your body’s ill, Save it by spending,[192] ” rewrote them in this manner, “To harlots give, and when your body’s ill Waste it by spending.” And Zeno in amending the lines of Sophocles, “Whoever comes to traffic with a king To him is slave however free he come,[193] ” rewrote it thus: “Is not a slave if only free he come,” by the word “free” as he now uses it designating the man who is fearless, high-minded, and unhumbled. What, then, is to hinder us also from encouraging the young to take the better course by means of similar rejoinders, dealing with the citations something like this: “Most enviable is the lot of him The shaft of whose desire hits what he would.[194] ” “Not so,” will be our retort, “but “The shaft of whose desire hits what is good.” ” For to gain and achieve one’s wish, if what one wishes is not right, is pitiable and unenviable. Again, “Not for good and no ill came thy life from thy sire, Agamemnon, but joy Thou shalt find interwoven with grief.[195] ” “No, indeed,” we shall say, “but you must find joy and not grief if your lot be but moderate, since “Not for good and no ill came thy life from thy sire, Agamemnon;” ” and: “Alas, from God this evil comes to men, When, knowing what is good, one does it not.[196] ” “No, rather is it bestial,” we reply, “and irrational and pitiable that a man who knows the better should be led astray by the worse as a result of a weak will and soft living.”
And again: “’Tis character persuades, and not the speech.[197] ” “No, rather it is both character and speech, or character by means of speech, just as a horseman uses a bridle, or a helmsman uses a rudder, since virtue has no instrument so humane or so akin to itself as speech.” And: “To women more than men is he inclined? Where there is beauty, either suits him best.[198] ” But it were better to say “ “Where there is virtue, either suits him best,” of a truth, and there is no difference in his inclination; but the man who is influenced by pleasure or outward beauty to shift his course hither and thither is incompetent and inconstant.” Again: “God’s doings make the wise to feel afraid.[199] ” “Not so by any means, but “God’s doings make the wise to feel assured,” but they do make the silly and foolish and ungrateful to feel afraid, because such persons suspect and fear the power which is the cause and beginning of every good thing, as though it did harm.” Such then is the system of amendment.