[13] Chrysippus has rightly indicated how the poet’s statements can be given a wider application, saying that what is serviceable should be taken over and made to apply to like situations. For when Hesiod [200] says, “Nor would even an ox disappear were there not a bad neighbour,” he says the same thing also about a dog and about an ass and about all things which in a similar way can “disappear.” And again when Euripides [201] says, “What man who recks not death can be a slave?” we must understand that he makes the same statement also about trouble and disease. For, as physicians who have learnt the efficacy of a drug adapted to one malady take it over and use it for every similar malady, so also when a statement has a general and universal value, we ought not to suffer it to be fixed upon one matter alone, but we ought to apply it to all the like, and inure the young men to see its general value, and quickly to carry over what is appropriate, and by many examples to give themselves training and practice in keen appreciation; so that when Menander says, “Blest is the man who has both wealth and sense,[202] ” they may think of the statement as holding good also about repute and leadership and facility in speaking; and so also that when they hear the rebuke which was administered by Odysseus to Achilles as he sat among the maidens in Scyrus, “Dost thou, to dim the glory of thy race, Card wool, son of the noblest man in Greece? [203] ” they may imagine it to be addressed also to the profligate and the avaricious and the heedless and the ill-bred, as, for example, “Dost drink, son of the noblest man in Greece,” or gamble, or follow quail-fighting, [204] or petty trading, or the exacting of usury, without a thought of what is magnanimous or worthy of your noble parentage? “Speak not of Wealth. I can’t admire a god Whose ready favour basest men secure.[205] ” Therefore speak not of repute, either, or of personal beauty, or the general’s cloak, or the priestly crown, to all which we see the worst of men attaining. “For ugly is the brood of cowardice,[206] ” and the same we may also aver of licentiousness, superstition, envy, and all the other pestilent disorders. Most excellently has Homer said “Paris, poor wretch, excelling in looks,[207] ” and “Hector, excelling in looks [208] ” (for he declares the man deserving of censure and reproach who is endowed with no good quality better than personal comeliness), and this we must make to apply to similar cases, thereby curtailing the pride of those who plume themselves on things of no worth, and teaching the young to regard as a disgrace and reproach such phrases as “excelling in wealth” and “excelling in dinners” and “excelling in children ” or “oxen,” and in fact even the use of the word “excelling” in such a connexion. For we ought to aim at the pre-eminence which comes from noble qualities, and we should strive to be first in matters of first importance, and to be great in the greatest: but the repute which comes from small and petty things is disreputable and paltry.
This illustration at once reminds us to consider carefully instances of censure and commendation, particularly in Homer’s poems. For he gives us expressly to understand that bodily and adventitious characteristics are unworthy of serious attention. For, to begin with, in their greetings and salutations, they do not call one another handsome or rich or strong, but they employ such fair words as these— “Heaven-sprung son of Laertes, Odysseus of many devices,[209] ” and “Hector, son of Priam, peer of Zeus in counsel,[210] ” and “Son of Peleus, Achilles, great glory to the Achaeans,[211] ” and “Noble son of Menoetius, in whom my soul finds pleasure.[212] ” In the second place they reproach without touching at all upon bodily characteristics, but they direct their censure to faults: “Drunken sot, with eyes of a dog and the wild deer’s courage,[213] ” and “Ajax, excelling at wrangling, ill advised,[214] ” and “Why, Idomeneus do you brag so soon? Unfitting Is it for you to be braggart,[215] ” and “Ajax, blundering boaster,[216] ” and finally Thersites is reproached [217] by Odysseus, not as lame or bald or hunchbacked, but as indiscreet in his language, while on the other hand the mother of Hephaestus affectionately drew an epithet from his lameness when she addressed him thus: “Up with you, club-foot, my child![218] ” Thus Homer ridicules those who feel ashamed of lameness or blindness, in that he does not regard as blameworthy that which is not shameful, or as shameful that which is brought about, not through our own acts, but by fortune.
Plainly, then, two great advantages accrue to those who accustom themselves carefully to peruse works of poetry: the first is conducive to moderation, that we do not odiously and foolishly reproach anybody with his fortune; while the second is conducive to magnanimity, that when we ourselves have met with chances and changes we be not humiliated or even disturbed, but bear gently with scoffings and revilings and ridicule, having especially before us the words of Philemon: “There’s naught more pleasing or in better taste Than having strength to bear when men revile.[219] ” But if anybody is plainly in need of reprehension, we should reprehend his faults and his giving way to emotion, after the fashion in which Adrastus of the tragedy, when Alcmaeon said to him, “You are the kin of her who slew her spouse,[220] ” replied “And you have murdered her who gave you birth.[221] ” For just as those who scourge the clothes do not touch the body,[222] so those who scoff at misfortune or low birth, do but vainly and foolishly assail externals, never touching the soul or even such matters as really need correction and stinging reproof.