Commentary on the Golden Verses — Hierocles
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ΙΕΡΟΚΛΕΟΥΣ ΕΙΣ ΤΑ ΧΡΥΣΑ ΕΠΗ ΥΠΟΜΝΗΜΑ
Translation/edition: Claude AI
Language: English
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## The Golden Verses of the Pythagoreans

[v1] First honour the immortal gods, as they are ordered by law,
and revere the oath. Next, the illustrious heroes;
and venerate the terrestrial daemons, performing what is lawful.
Honour your parents too, and those most nearly related to you.
Of all others, make him your friend who is best in virtue.
[v6] Yield to gentle words and to helpful deeds,
and do not hate your friend for a small fault,
so far as you are able; for ability dwells close to necessity.
Know these things so; and accustom yourself to master these:
the belly first of all, and sleep, and lust,
[v11] and anger. Never do anything shameful, either with another
or by yourself; and above all, feel shame before yourself.
Next, practise justice in deed and in word,
and do not accustom yourself to act thoughtlessly in anything;
but know that death is appointed for all,
[v16] and that wealth is wont now to be gained, now to be lost.
Of all the pains that mortals suffer by divine fortunes,
whatever lot you have, bear it gently and do not chafe at it.
Yet it is fitting to heal it as far as you can; and consider this:
the lot does not give very much of these to the good.
[v21] Many words, both base and noble, fall upon men's ears;
be not dismayed by them, nor yet let yourself
be kept from them. But if some falsehood is spoken,
yield gently. And what I tell you now, let it be fulfilled in every case:
let no one by word or deed induce you
[v26] to do or say what is not best for you.
Deliberate before the deed, lest it turn out foolish;
to do and say senseless things is the mark of a wretched man.
But do those things that will not grieve you afterward.
Do nothing that you do not understand, but learn
[v31] what is needful; and so you will lead a most delightful life.
Nor should you be careless of the body's health,
but keep measure in drink and food and exercise;
and by measure I mean what will not grieve you.
Accustom yourself to a way of life that is clean and unpampered,
[v36] and guard against doing such things as bring envy.
Do not spend out of season, like one ignorant of what is noble,
nor be illiberal: measure is best in all things.
Do those things that will not harm you, and reason before the deed.
Do not let sleep come upon your soft eyes
[v41] before you have reckoned over each deed of the day:
“Where did I transgress? What did I do? What duty did I leave undone?”
Begin from the first and go through them all; and then,
if you have done base things, rebuke yourself; if good things, rejoice.
Labour at these things, practise them; these you must love;
[v46] these will set you in the footsteps of divine virtue —
yes, by him who handed down to our soul the Tetraktys,
fount of ever-flowing nature. But go to your work,
having prayed to the gods to bring it to completion. Having mastered these,
you will know the constitution of immortal gods and mortal men,
[v51] how each thing is distinguished and how it is held together;
you will know, as is right, that nature is in all things alike,
so that you will neither hope for what is not to be hoped, nor will anything escape you.
You will know men whose sufferings are self-chosen,
wretched, who, though good things are near, neither see
[v56] nor hear them; and few understand the release from evils.
Such is the lot that harms the minds of mortals: like cylinders
they roll now here, now there, suffering endless woes.
For baneful Strife, their inborn companion, harms them unnoticed;
one must not provoke it, but yield and flee.
[v61] Father Zeus, surely you would free all men from many evils,
if you showed to all what daemon they make use of.
But take courage, for mortals are of divine race,
to whom sacred Nature, bringing all things forth, reveals each one.
If you have any share in these, you will master what I command you,
[v66] and, healing your soul, you will save it from these toils.
But abstain from the foods we spoke of, in the purifications
and in the release of the soul, judging each thing; and consider all,
setting above you, as charioteer, the best judgment.
And if, leaving the body behind, you come to the free aether,
[v71] you will be immortal, a god undying, no longer mortal.

## The Commentary


### Proem

[0.0] Philosophy is the purification and perfection of human life: purification from material irrationality and from the mortal-formed body, and perfection as the recovery of our proper well-being, leading us back to likeness to God. These two things virtue and truth are best fitted by nature to accomplish: virtue by banishing the immoderation of the passions, truth by bestowing the divine form on those who are naturally disposed to receive it.
[0.1] For this science, then, which is to make us pure and perfect, we need certain rules, briefly defined, like the aphorisms of an art, so that by their means we may arrive methodically and in due order at the goal of well-being. And among such rules as bear upon the whole of philosophy, we may with good reason give the first place to the Pythagorean verses that are called "golden". For they contain the general doctrines of all philosophy, both practical and contemplative, by means of which one may acquire truth and virtue, recover oneself pure, and be fortunate enough to attain likeness to God; and, as Plato's Timaeus says — that exact teacher of the Pythagorean doctrines — having become healthy and whole, one may arrive at the form of one's former state.
[0.2] And first the Verses set out the precepts of practical virtue. For we must first bring into order the irrationality and indolence within us, and only then apply ourselves to the knowledge of divine things. For just as an eye that is inflamed and not cleansed cannot look upon things of great brightness, so a soul that has not acquired virtue cannot behold the beauty of truth as in a mirror; for it is not lawful for the impure to touch the pure.
[0.3] Practical philosophy is productive of virtue, contemplative philosophy of truth; and so in the Verses themselves we find practical philosophy called human virtue, and contemplative philosophy celebrated as divine virtue. For, having concluded the precepts of civic virtue, the discourse says:
[0.4] [45] Labour at these things, practise them; these you must love;
 [46] these will set you in the footsteps of divine virtue.
[0.5] We must, therefore, first become men, and then gods. The civic virtues make a man good; the sciences that lead up to divine virtue make him a god. Now for those who ascend, the lesser things come in order before the greater; and this is why, in the Pythagorean precepts, the discourse delivers the precepts of the virtues first in the Verses, training us to rise from the best use of the things of this life to likeness to God. This, then, is the aim and the order of the Verses: to set before those who hear them the character of the philosopher, before all other readings.
[0.6] They received the name "golden" because, as verses go, they are the best and most divine. So too we call the best among the races of men the "golden race", taking the difference of characters from the analogy of the metals. For gold is something unadulterated and not filled with earth, as are the metals akin to it and next after it, such as silver, bronze and iron, which are so filled; and over these gold has a natural superiority, since it alone of them breeds no rust, whereas each of the others turns to rust in proportion as it partakes of earth. Since, then, earthy rust is taken to stand for material vice, the holy and pure race, and the character wholly clean of wickedness, was fittingly called golden; and in the same way these verses, being beautiful through and through, have been given the title "golden" and divine. For it is not that one part of them is beautiful and another not, as with some other poems; rather all of them alike display the pure character, lead up to likeness to God, and unveil the most perfect aim of the Pythagorean philosophy, as will become clear in the exposition of each verse in turn. And first let us begin with the first.

### I · Verse 1

[1.0] [1] First honour the immortal gods, as they are ordered by law,
[1.1] Since piety, which has its reference to the divine cause, is the leader of all the virtues, the precept concerning it rightly stands at the head of the laws laid down in the Verses: namely, that we must honour the gods within the cosmos according to the order inherent in them, which the demiurgic law brought forth together with their very being, placing some of them in the first sphere, others in the second, others again in the third, and so on in succession until the whole number of the heavenly circles is complete. For to know and honour them in the rank in which they were ordered by their Demiurge and Father is the part of those who follow the divine law and render them true honour. And neither to exalt their dignity beyond measure nor to fall short of it in our conceptions of them, but to hold that they are what they have come to be, and have the rank they have been allotted, carries our reverence up to God their Demiurge, whom one might properly call the God of gods, God supreme and best.
[1.2] We shall discover the true dignity of the world-making God, the best of craftsmen, only if we regard him as the cause of gods and the maker of unchangeable rational beings. For those whom the discourse here names "immortal gods" are those who always and in the same way think the Demiurgic God, who are ever intent upon his good, and who receive from him their being and their well-being indivisibly and unchangeably, as impassive images of the demiurgic cause, untouched by evil. For it befits God to establish such images of himself as well, and not all of them changeable and subject to passion through a leaning toward vice, as are human souls, which are the lowest class of rational natures, just as, conversely, the class now called "the immortal gods" is the highest.
[1.3] And perhaps these were called "immortal gods" by way of distinction from human souls, because they never die to the divine well-being, nor ever fall into forgetfulness either of their own essence or of the Father's goodness. But the human soul is subject to these affections: at one time it thinks God and recovers its own dignity, at another it falls away from both. Hence human souls might fittingly be called mortal gods, since they at times die to the divine well-being by fleeing from God, and come to life in it again by turning back to God; and so in the one condition they live the divine life, and in the other they die — so far as an immortal essence can have a share in the lot of death — not by passing into non-being, but by falling away from well-being. For the death of a rational being is godlessness and folly, on which follows the uprising of the passions, beyond all measure, in its life. For in ignorance of what is better one must be a slave to what is worse; and from this slavery there is no release except by turning back, through recollection, to intellect and to God.
[1.4] Between those called immortal gods and those we have called mortal gods there must be some class, more honourable than man but inferior to a god, which through its own middle position links the extremes to one another, so that the whole of the rational creation may be well bound together with itself. This middle class never has a complete ignorance of God, nor yet a knowledge wholly immovable and abiding always the same; it always knows, but apprehends now in one way, now in another, sometimes more and sometimes less. By always knowing it rises above the human race; by not knowing unchangeably and always in the same way it falls below the divine. It is a mean by nature; it was neither raised from man to the middle rank by progress, nor sunk to it from the rank of god by neglect.
[1.5] For the Demiurgic God established first, second and third natures, differing from one another by nature, not confused with one another, and not exchanging their rank through virtue and vice. These, standing eternally in their essence, were distinguished by kind according to the order that came forth together with them, and were ordered in proportion to the demiurgic causes. For as there, in the all-perfect wisdom, the order holds of first, middle and last — for this is the very being of wisdom, to bring forth its making in order and perfection, so that wisdom, order and perfection go together — so too in this universe the beings that came to be according to the first thoughts of God would be first in the cosmos, those according to his middle thoughts would themselves be middle, and those resembling the limit of his thoughts would be last among rational beings. For the whole rational order, together with the incorruptible body connate with it, is an image of the whole Demiurgic God. The first beings in the cosmos are an undefiled image of the summit there; the middle beings here are a middle image of the middle there; and the third and last among rational beings are a last image of the limit of the divinity there. Of these three classes, the present discourse has signified the first by "immortal gods", the middle by "illustrious heroes", and the last by "terrestrial daemons", as we shall see a little later.
[1.6] But now let us return to where we began. What is the law, what is the order that accords with it, and what is the honour rendered in keeping with that order? Law is the demiurgic intellect and the divine will, which brings forth all things eternally and preserves them for ever. Lawful order is that which, from the Father and Demiurge of all, entered into being together with the immortal gods, and makes some of them first, others second. For although, within the whole rational order, they have been allotted the summit, they are nonetheless diversified among themselves, and some are more divine than others. A mark of their superiority and subordination in essence is the order of the heavenly spheres, which have received their positions according to essence and power; so that the law lies in their very essence, and their order is of one nature with their dignity. For they did not come into existence at random and afterwards get separated; they proceeded into being already ordered, as different parts of the whole heaven, as of a single living being, preserving their coordination with one another at once in their distinction of kind and in their conjunction; so that no exchange of their positions could ever be conceived except together with the destruction of the universe. And this cannot happen so long as their first cause remains wholly unchangeable and unalterable, possessing an essence identical with its activity, and having goodness not as something acquired but as its very essence, by itself and through itself leading all things to well-being.
[1.7] For no other reasonable cause of his making of all things can be assigned to him but the goodness that is his essence. "He was good," it says, "and in the good no envy about anything ever arises." The causes of the creation of this universe that are alleged apart from goodness befit human circumstances rather than God. Being good, then, in his essence, God brought forth first by nature the beings most made like himself; second, those possessing a middle likeness to him; and third, and last of all the beings that resemble him, those that fall furthest short of likeness to God. And their order ran together with the essence of the beings that came to be, so that the naturally better is ranked before the inferior, both among the classes taken as wholes and among those that have a gradation of species within each class. For it was not by the allotment of fortune that all things received their rank, nor by changes of choice; they were brought forth different by demiurgic laws, and were allotted an order proportionate to the worth of their natures. Therefore the words "as they are ordered by law, honour" must be understood as applying in common not only to the immortal gods but also to the illustrious heroes and to human souls. For in each class there is a multitude of species ranked by superiority and subordination.
[1.8] Such, then, is the nature and the order of rational beings. But what is the law, and the honour that follows it? We say again that law is the unchangeable demiurgic activity of God, which begets the divine classes and orders them eternally and immutably; and the honour that accords with the law is knowledge of the essence of those we honour, and likening ourselves to them as far as we can. For what one admires, one also imitates as far as one is able; and one honours him who lacks nothing by receiving the good things that he holds out. For you will not honour God best by giving him something, but by making yourself worthy to receive what comes from him. For, as the Pythagoreans say, "You will honour God best if you make your understanding like God"; and, "Whoever honours God as though he stood in need of anything unwittingly supposes himself to be greater than God"; and, "Costly offerings do not become honour to God unless they are brought with a mind filled with God. For the gifts and sacrifices of fools are fuel for the fire, and their votive offerings a provision for temple-robbers; but a mind filled with God, firmly and lastingly established, joins us to God." For like must needs go to like; and this is why the wise man alone is called a priest, he alone dear to God, he alone knows how to pray. For he alone knows how to honour who does not confound the dignity of those he honours, who first of all offers himself as the victim, who fashions his own soul into a divine statue, and who prepares his own intellect as a temple to receive the divine light. For what can you offer of this kind from the materials lying all around us, that will make a statue congenial to God, or a gift able to be united with him? Yet this must necessarily come about in the rational being once it is purified. For, as the same men say, God has no place on earth more fitting than a pure soul; and with them the Pythian god agrees, saying:
[1.9] "In pious mortals I delight as much as in Olympus."
[1.10] The pious man is he who possesses divine knowledge and offers his own perfection as the best honour to the causes of good things; who, in his eagerness to acquire them, turns back to those whose nature it is to bestow them, and who, by being able to receive the good things, honours those who ever give them. But whoever chooses to honour the divine in some other way, and not through himself, makes his honour a mere outlay of outward abundance, offering not a virtue of his own but acquitting himself of the duty with things outside himself. Yet even a good man takes no pleasure in receiving such things unless they are given with the best disposition. Of this kind, again, is the saying of the Pythian god. For when a man who had sacrificed hecatombs without a pious mind asked how his gifts had been received, the god answered:
[1.11] "But the barley-meal of the renowned man of Hermione pleased me,"
[1.12] preferring the cheapest offering to all that costliness, because it was adorned by a mind that reveres God. For with this, all things are dear to God; and without it nothing could ever be pleasing to God.
[1.13] So much, then, has been said sufficiently for the present concerning reverence for God and holiness. But since the law of the ordering of the universe is preserved by an unchangeable guard, and it was the custom of the ancients, in their secret teachings, to call the keeper of this guard "oath", it is fitting that next after what has been said he introduces, as a doctrine that follows from it, the precept concerning the oath.

### II · Verse 2

[2.0] [2] and revere the oath.
[2.1] Law, we declared in what went before, is the activity of God that is always the same, which eternally and unchangeably brings all things forth into being. Oath, accordingly, following upon law, we would now call the cause that keeps all things in sameness and so makes them firm that, held fast as by the faith of an oath, they preserve the order of the law; so that the inviolability of the good order in created things is the effect of the demiurgic law. For that all things abide as they are disposed by law would be the principal work of the divine oath, which in the beings that always think God is preserved in the highest degree and always; but in those that at times think him and at times fall away from the knowledge of God, the oath too is in like manner transgressed by those who fall away, and kept again by those who are led up to the turning back to God. For the keeping of the divine laws is here called oath, by which all things that are by nature able to know the Demiurgic God are bound to him and hang from him; and of these, those that always cleave to him always revere the oath, while those that at some time fall away then also commit impiety against the oath, transgressing not only the order of the divine law but also the faith of the divine oath. Such, then, is the oath that is inherent in the essence of the rational classes, compelling them to cleave to their Father and Maker and never in any way to transgress the laws that he has laid down.
[2.2] But the oath used in the transactions of life is a trace of that one, directing towards truth those who use it as they ought. For it transforms the wavering of human choice into firmness, and compels it to abide in sameness in both words and deeds, on the one hand bringing to light the clear truth of what has happened, and on the other exacting certainty for what is going to happen.
[2.3] For these reasons, then, it is especially fitting to revere the oath: the one that pre-exists in essence, because of its guardianship of eternity; the human one, which is a helper in the affairs of life, as the image of the former, and which, next after that one, has become for us the presiding power of firmness and truth, and fills with the noblest habits of character those who have learned to revere it. And the only reverence of an oath would be the unhindered keeping, so far as lies in our power, of what has been sworn — the keeping that, by a voluntary necessity, attunes those who revere the oath to the steadfastness and truthfulness of the divine state.
[2.4] Now the first and ineffable keeping of the oath is by nature recovered, through turning back to God, by those who, through the purificatory virtues, heal their breach of the divine oath; while the keeping of the oath in life is preserved by the civic virtues. For only those who possess these virtues are able to keep their oaths in the affairs of life also; but vice, the mother of perjury, tramples the oath underfoot through the instability of character. For how could the lover of money ever be true to his oath when he is to receive or repay money? And how would the intemperate man or the coward abide by his oaths? Will not each of them, wherever he thinks he will gain some advantage in the things by which he is overcome, there cast off his reverence for oaths, bartering divine goods for mortal and perishable ones? But in those in whom the possession of the virtues is well established, the reverence of oaths is also naturally well preserved.
[2.5] The best practice for keeping one's reverence for the oath is not to use the oath frequently, nor at random, nor on chance occasions, nor to fill out a speech, nor to vouch for a story, but, so far as possible, to reserve its use for matters at once necessary and honourable, and then only when no other means of safety in such matters appears except through the truth that comes from the oath alone. And these things will be credible to those who hear us if we show a character in accord with the oath, and leave no suspicion that in human affairs anything could ever seem to us greater than truth, whether we are unsworn or swearing.
[2.6] So "revere the oath" enjoins not only keeping one's oaths but also abstaining from oaths. For it is thus that we shall keep our oaths true: if we do not abuse oaths. For in continual swearing one may easily slip into perjury, whereas sparing use is followed by keeping. For a man will either not swear, or, when he swears, he will keep his oath; and neither will his tongue run ahead through habit, nor his understanding trip through incontinence of the passions. For the understanding will be set right by his character, being good, and the tongue by the habit of abstaining from swearing.
[2.7] Keeping one's oath befits the honour of the gods spoken of before, as being always inborn in piety and its attendant; for the oath too, as we saw, was the guardian of the divine law in the ordering of the universe. Honour the law, then, by following its ordinance, and revere the oath by not abusing it lightly, so that you may become accustomed to keep your oaths from not being accustomed to swear. For the keeping of oaths is no small part of piety.
[2.8] So much concerning the first class of the superior beings, and the divine law that governs their order, and the oath that accompanies the law. Next he adds that the class after the gods also, which we said is the angelic, must be honoured in the second place.

### III · Verse 2

[3.0] [2] Next, the illustrious heroes;
[3.1] These are the middle class of rational beings, who, filling the place next after the immortal gods, rank before human nature and join through themselves the last to the first. To these, then, as second, we must render the second honour, understanding in their case too the words "honour them, as they are ordered by law". For the whole force of honour lies in the knowledge of the essence of those honoured, from which one also discovers well and rightly what it is fitting to say or do towards those who are honoured. For how could anyone converse with those he does not know? And how will he bring a gift to those whose worth he does not know? The first and true honour, then, in the case of the illustrious heroes too, is the knowledge of their essence and rank, and an understanding of the activity that accompanies it and of the contribution it extends to this universe.
[3.2] In every case the honour must be made commensurate with the essences; and this comes from the science concerning them. For when we have discerned how each thing stands in nature and in rank, then we shall also render them honour in accordance with the law. But we shall honour nothing that is inferior to human being; we shall honour, principally, only the beings superior by nature, and also those equal to us that have been adorned with a pre-eminence of virtue.
[3.3] Of the beings superior by nature, the first and best is the Demiurgic God, who is honoured incomparably above all. Of the beings in the cosmos, the first are those that are from him and after him, who think him unchangeably and, without being affected, bear the image of the participation in good things that descends upon them from the demiurgic cause. These the present discourse has called immortal gods, because they do not die, nor do they lose their likeness to God, but continue in it always and in the same way.
[3.4] In the middle in essence and in honour are those now called the illustrious heroes, who always think the Demiurge and are illumined by the well-being that comes from him, but not in the same way nor unchangeably. For, being united to God in a middle degree and admitting of a change that is untouched by vice, they dance about him with now one and now another act of apprehension; and the changeless and unified contemplation of the first beings they both divide and gather together by their own multiplied knowledge, making the limits of the others' epoptic vision the beginnings of their own initiation.
[3.5] Hence they are fittingly called illustrious heroes: illustrious (agauoi), as being good (agathoi) and ever luminous, and never falling into vice or forgetfulness; heroes (hērōes), as being in a manner loves (erōes) and lovers (erōtes) — erotic and dialectical lovers, as it were, of God — lifting (airontes) us and raising us up from our sojourn on earth to the divine commonwealth. The same beings it is customary to call good daemons too, as being knowing (daēmones) and skilled in the divine laws, and sometimes also angels, as revealing and announcing (diangellontes) to us the rules that lead to well-being.
[3.6] Often, too, using the three names, we divide the breadth of the middle class into three, and call the part nearest the heavenly beings angels, the part joined to the earthly ones heroes, and the part equally distant from both extremes daemons, as Plato does in many places. But some call the whole middle class by one of the three names, calling them all angels or daemons or heroes, for the reasons we have stated; just as here too he has called the whole middle class illustrious heroes, who stand to the first class as radiance to fire and as a child to a father.
[3.7] Hence the heroes are also rightly celebrated as children of the gods, not being themselves begotten of mortal intercourse, but proceeding from their uniform cause, like light concurrent with the essence of a body of light — light, that is, in the open air and pure; after which is conceived the light that is in shadow and becomes mixed with darkness. To this the third, the human, class stands in analogy, by being inclined at times towards vice and forgetfulness, through which man also falls away from always thinking God: he falls short of those who always think him by at times not thinking him, but rises above the irrational creatures by at times thinking him and being recalled to divine knowledge, when he is also ranked in the divine chorus, having escaped material envy and shaken off mortal attachment. Then, therefore, he who has been deemed worthy of divine acceptance is worthy of honour from us too, as one who has adorned a nature equal to ours with a participation in the superior. For it befits the lover of God to honour also whatever has in any way been made like him, whether it possesses that likeness from eternity or happens to have acquired it by practice from some time onward: such are men who have excelled in virtue, concerning whom the present discourse legislates next.

### IV · Verse 3

[4.0] [3] and venerate the terrestrial daemons, performing what is lawful.
[4.1] Human souls adorned with truth and virtue he calls daemons, as being knowing (daēmones) and skilled. Then, distinguishing them from the daemons by nature, who fill the middle class, he called them "terrestrial", as able to live as citizens on earth, to enter earthly bodies and to dwell on the earth; so that by calling them daemons he might separate them from base and ignorant men, as being in a sense unknowing (adaēmones) and not daemons, while by adding "terrestrial" he might set them apart from those who are always knowing and always skilled, and whose nature it is neither to live as citizens on earth nor to share life with earthly bodies. For the title "terrestrial daemon" belongs to none other than one who is a man by nature but has become a daemon by relation; since the third class is properly called earthly, as last among rational beings and turned towards earthly life. For the first was heavenly and the middle aethereal.
[4.2] Since, then, all men are in this sense terrestrial rational beings, but not all are daemons or wise, he fittingly joined the words together and called wise men "terrestrial daemons". For neither are all men wise, nor are all the wise men; the illustrious heroes and the immortal gods, too, being superior to men by nature, are wise and good. The discourse, then, exhorts us to revere those men who have been ranked with the divine classes, who are equal to daemons and equal to angels and like the illustrious heroes.
[4.3] For let us not suppose that it bids us honour some base class of daemons, as the word might seem to someone to suggest from common usage. For in general it is not fitting for one who is in love with God and has perceived his own worth to honour what is inferior to human being. Nor shall we honour man himself after the superior beings, unless he has been made like the superior beings and moves with the divine chorus.
[4.4] What, then, is the honour paid to these? "Performing what is lawful," he says. This is to obey the precepts they have left us, to abide by their words as by laws, and to follow the same road of life which they travelled and did not begrudge sharing with us, but, like some immortal ancestral inheritance, strove to preserve for those who came after them, setting down in writing, for the common benefit, the elements of the virtues and the rules of truth. To obey these and live accordingly is a truer honour to them than if one were to bring them the most costly libations and offer them lavish funeral sacrifices.
[4.5] Such is the honour of the superior beings, beginning from the Demiurge and ending in good men, by way of the heavenly and aethereal classes in between.
[4.6] But since we must also take the greatest account of the relations of life, such as fathers and kinsmen (who are not in every case good, but in every case possess, with respect to us, a claim to honour by the worth of the relation), for this reason he adds:

### V · Verse 4

[5.0] [4] Honour your parents too, and those most nearly related to you.
[5.1] Good men, as daemonic and divine, the discourse has laid down that we should revere; but parents, and those who are in some way close to them by natural kinship, whatever they may be like, it bids us honour because of the very necessity of the relation. For what the superior beings are to us according to our eternal kinship — the heavenly beings holding the rank of fathers, the heroes that of honoured kinsmen — this our parents and near relations contribute to us for our mortal life: the near relations being those closest to our parents, and for this reason dignified with the honour that comes after that of parents.
[5.2] How, then, shall we honour these as well? Is it by directing our own life by their judgement, so as to think and do whatever may be pleasing to them? But in this way the practice of the virtues would be overturned into a zeal for vice, if the fathers should happen to be wicked. Shall we, then, dishonour them in everything because we condemn their vice? And how, then, are we still obeying the present law? And how, if we do not honour the godlike image in our parents or the heroic semblance in our near kin, shall we not commit impiety against those whom we say they resemble? And so the virtue we seem to practise by disobeying our parents will turn into a greater evil — impiety. Yet if we obey our parents in everything, how shall we not in turn fall away from piety and from the rest of virtue, if through depravity of character they should happen not to be guiding us towards what is truly good?
[5.3] For if what seemed good to the parents were in every case true and good, the honour of parents would be in harmony with the honour of the superior beings. But if the choice of parents is at times deaf to the divine laws, what must those do who have fallen into such a conflict of laws, other than what it is fitting to observe also in the case of other duties that come into opposition through circumstance?
[5.4] For when greater and lesser goods are set before us, we must prefer the greater to the lesser, whenever it is not possible to preserve both. For example, it is good to obey God, and it is good also to obey one's parents. If, then, obedience to both leads to the same end, the result would be a godsend and free of conflict; but if the divine law carries us one way and our parents another, the choice being at war with itself, we must follow the better, disobeying our parents only in those things in which they themselves do not obey the divine laws. For one who wishes to keep the rules of virtue cannot agree with those who transgress them.
[5.5] But in all other things we shall honour our parents exceedingly, rendering them the service of our body and the supply of our means as eagerly as possible. For it is just that they should make use of those whom they begot and reared.
[5.6] But what does not depend on the succession that comes from them, this the law leaves free of their mastery, and bids us seek our true Father, cleave to him, and take the greatest care for our likeness to him. And so it turns out that we can do both — preserve both the divine goods and the human. And we shall neither neglect the care of our parents through a conceit of virtue, nor through senseless compliance admit impiety, the greatest of evils.
[5.7] For even if they should threaten us with death for disobeying, or with disinheritance, we must not be frightened by such things, but must know well what it is that will suffer them, and that they threaten only what they begot; while that which is beyond suffering these things it befits us to keep free and obedient to God alone.
[5.8] The true honour of parents, then, which the aim of virtue grants, is that we spare neither our bodies nor our means, but willingly submit ourselves to them in all such things. For it is fitting neither to decline serving our parents with our own hands — rather, the more toilsome and servile that service becomes, the more we should count it an honour — nor to be sparing when our substance is spent, but readily to furnish everything for their need, glad and rejoicing in the labours and expenses undertaken for them. For to do these things gratefully both preserves the law of virtue and repays the debt owed to nature.
[5.9] Such is the honour of parents. That of near relations, ranked second after it, will measure its service by nearness of nature, allotting to each of our kin as much of the honour that follows that of parents as their nearness to them indicates — it being clear that in their case too virtue remains free of any master.

### VI · Verse 5

[6.0] [5] Of all others, make him your friend who is best in virtue.
[6.1] After the first honour, owed to our kindred above, and the honour that follows it, owed to parents and kinsmen, the law of making friends is handed down in due sequence. It bids us choose the best of those outside our family for friendship and join ourselves to him in the fellowship of the virtues, so that we may have the good man as a friend for a good reason, and may not attach him to ourselves for other uses. Thus this precept resembles the injunction concerning virtuous men who have departed this life. For as there he said that of all men only those who have knowledge ought to be honoured, so here he exhorts us to make friends of the good alone, allowing a choice in the case of others, but in the case of parents and kinsmen being content with nature. For the mere person of a father or a brother brings honour along with it, whereas with others it is virtue that makes a man worthy of honour, just as with those who have departed from life. But the ones ranked before these are worthy of honour by their very nature: there, gods and heroes; here, fathers and kinsmen, who hold out to us, in a mortal nature, images of our immortal kinship.

Such, then, is the first pursuit and acquisition of a friend. How he is to be kept, in the way that contributes to our fellowship in good things, and how he is to be set aside, if he is seen to change for the worse and not to heed the counsels that lead to the better — this he says next.

### VII · Verses 6–8

[7.0] [6] Yield to gentle words and to helpful deeds,
 [7] and do not hate your friend for a small fault,
 [8] so far as you are able; for ability dwells close to necessity.
[7.1] Here he discusses how we ought to behave towards our friends. And first, that when they propose what is good, and do anything whatever for our benefit, we ought to obey them willingly. For it is to this common good that the law of friendship joins us, so that we may be helped by them towards progress in virtue, and they by us. For as fellow-travellers on the common road of the best life, whatever one of us foresees better than another we must lay down for the common benefit, yielding gently to those friends who guide us well, gently offering them in turn a share in what is good, and never quarrelling with them about money or reputation or any other thing belonging to the mortal order. For that would be to fall into enmity, "for a small fault", with those who are our friends in respect of the greatest goods.

In everything, then, we shall bear with our friends, as constrained by the very great necessity of the friendly disposition — except in one thing. We shall not give way to them when they are sliding towards the worse; nor, when they turn from the pursuit of philosophy to some other purpose in life, shall we follow them, being swept along ourselves with those who fall away from the aim of virtue. Rather, if possible, we shall try by every means to set our friend right again; and if we cannot persuade him, we shall keep quiet, neither making him an enemy, because of the friendship that has been, nor any longer a friend, because of his change for the worse. So it is for this reason that we shall at some point set our friend aside: because he can no longer be our partner in virtue, for the sake of which we made him our friend in the first place.

But let this setting aside take care not to fall into enmity. For even if he has withdrawn himself from the friendship, we at least must take the greatest pains that he may be called back to what is right: not being glad at our friend's fall, nor looking down on the weakness of his judgment, but rather grieving and lamenting, feeling deep pain for him and praying for him, and trying to do everything that may lead him back to salvation through repentance. Such things are these: not to quarrel with him over money or reputation, not to deprive him of our fellowship by way of insult, and not to make his misfortune a matter of pride for ourselves.
[7.2] Now since our forbearance contributes most of all to the best keeping of friends, to their reasonable setting aside and to their recall through repentance — our not haggling with friends over anything, not taking things with them in the utmost rigour, but being as patient as possible — for this reason he added "so far as you are able". Then, so that no one should measure ability by the standard of his own choice, but by what nature itself can bear, as much as necessity discovers when it comes upon us, he added "for ability dwells close to necessity". For each person is proved by necessity to be able to do more than he thinks he can. We must therefore be willing to bear with our friends as far as necessity shows that we are able, and to make bearable, through the necessity of friendship, even what at first appeared unbearable. For let us not suppose that only what is imposed on us by force should be nobly endured; we must also count the things that tend to the keeping and recall of friends as worthy of still greater endurance, as injunctions of divine necessity. And with men of good sense the necessity of the intellect is more powerful than force from without.

Whether, then, you look to the necessity that arises from circumstance, or to the voluntary necessity — that which is made up of the rules of knowledge and descends from the divine laws — you will discover the measure of ability that is in you. This measure the discourse now tells us we must bring to bear upon our friends, when it commands us not to be hastily set at enmity with them "for a small fault". It counts all things outside the soul as small, and forbids us, from a grudging attachment to these things, to make our friend an enemy; rather, through indifference to such things, we should call back even the friend who has fallen away, and in every case be conscious within ourselves that, so far as lay in us, we both kept the friends we had and won back those who had slid towards the worse, and that we neither began any enmity nor repaid in kind one who had become an enemy of his own accord.
[7.3] For this is what the ordinance of friendship prescribes, since friendship is the greatest virtue and appears upon the others as their perfection. For the end of the virtues is friendship, and their beginning is piety. The principle of piety is in us the seed of all good things, while the state of friendship is the most perfect fruit of the virtues. As, then, we must observe justice not only towards those who deal justly with us but also towards those who attempt to wrong us, lest by wronging them in return we fall into the same evil condition as they, so we must also hold fast to friendship — that is, to love of mankind towards all who share our kind. But we shall set the measures of friendship in their fitting order: the good we shall embrace in every way, both for their nature and for their disposition, as preserving the perfection of man; the bad we shall love for the sake of our common nature alone, since they offer us nothing from their disposition towards the choice of friendship.

Hence it is rightly said that no one is an enemy to the virtuous man, and that only the good man is a friend to the good. For as one who loves man as man, he holds not even the bad man to be an enemy; but as one who seeks a man adorned with virtue for fellowship, he chooses the good out of all, imitating God even in the measures of friendship — God, who hates no human being, but embraces the good man above all. For, holding out the good of his love for mankind to the whole race in common, he grants to each his fitting portion, leading the good up to himself, and directing the fugitives from virtue towards what is right by the laws of Justice. For this is both proportionate and beneficial to each. So it befits us also to keep friendship towards all men, with the distribution according to worth.
[7.4] For we shall also have temperance and justice towards all, and not towards the just and temperate alone; nor shall we be good to the good and bad to the bad. For if we changed so readily along with whoever we happened upon, we should have no good of our own that we kept always and towards all. But if we have acquired virtue as a settled state, it is not in the power of whoever wishes to draw us away from it; nor shall we alter our dispositions to match those we meet, being fortunate in the permanence of virtue. What holds, then, for the other virtues must be kept in the case of friendship too, since friendship, as we said, is the greatest virtue, and love of mankind is seen in common towards all but in a special way towards the good; which is why the name "love of mankind" is the more fitting for it. So much for these things; let us go on to what follows.

### VIII · Verses 9–11

[8.0] [9] Know these things so; and accustom yourself to master these:
 [10] the belly first of all, and sleep, and lust,
 [11] and anger.
[8.1] All these must be restrained and set in order, so that they may not disturb our reasoning. Come, then, let us bridle the whole irrational part and bring it into order by right training, since its parts in succession furnish vice to one another. Thus the belly, when overfilled, brings on much sleep; both together produce an abundance of seed, which rouses immoderately to sexual pleasure and whets the appetitive part of the soul towards licentiousness. And the spirited part, swept along with this, rushes into every kind of fight: now avenging wrongs over food and drink, now fighting over courtesans, and at other times contending to acquire one pleasure or another.

"Accustom yourself", then, "to master these", beginning from the belly first, so that the irrational forms of the soul may become obedient to reason, and that you yourself, by your own efforts, may be able to keep undeviatingly piety, honour towards parents and all that the discourse enjoined a little earlier. For these precepts that follow are the power by which the former are kept, since all of those would be transgressed if the passionate powers did not follow reason. For either anger has stirred a man up against his parents, or desire has armed him to disobey them; and again, either anger has roused him to blasphemy, or desire of money to perjury. In general, evil deeds are done through these powers, when the rational soul does not direct them to what is right. Hence come impieties of every kind, wars among kinsmen, betrayals of friends and every form of lawlessness, so that some are even compelled to cry out:I know what evils I am about to do,
but anger is stronger than my counsels, [Euripides, Medea 1078–79]
[8.2] and others, or the same people at another time, to cry:
[8.3] I know what evils I am about to do,
but desire is stronger than my counsels,
[8.4] and:
[8.5] You seem to me to speak well, but I feel what most people feel: I am not entirely persuaded by you. [Plato, Gorgias 513c]
[8.7] For the rational class, being naturally well disposed to the perception of what is noble, is easily brought to recollection and easily led to the teaching of right reason, provided it is not dragged down towards vice by the pulls of passion, as by so many weights of lead. We must therefore both know for ourselves what we ought to do, and accustom the irrational powers, as far as possible, to follow the reason within us as well. For when the passions have been set in order in this way, our reasoning would be able to keep without distraction the first precepts, about which it was said, "Know these things so". But about those that follow he said, "accustom yourself to master", showing that the rational part is ordered by teaching and knowledge, the irrational by habituation and a kind of bodily moulding; just as irrational animals, too, are led by men through habit alone. The belly, then, once accustomed to seek what is moderate, renders the other desires of the body more orderly and the spirit more harmonious, so that we may deliberate in quiet about what we ought to do, without being greatly troubled by the passions that beset us. From this we are also taught to know ourselves, what we are in truth, and to respect ourselves once we have attained that knowledge. And from this knowledge, and from the reverence that accompanies it, comes the avoidance of shameful things. For evils are called shameful as being unfitting and unworthy to be done by a rational being. Concerning these he goes on to say:

### IX · Verses 11–12

[9.0] [11] Never do anything shameful, either with another
 [12] or by yourself; and above all, feel shame before yourself.
[9.1] For either, when acting on our own, we regard some shameful deed as indifferent, which we would never have done with another, out of shame before our partner in the act; or conversely, in going along with certain people, we do what we would never have done on our own, drawn into boldness in the deed by the fellowship of those who act with us. For this reason he has cut off in advance both roads of deviation into what is shameful and evil. For if the shameful is truly to be shunned, it could never become worthy of choice because of circumstance. Therefore he joined the two and said, "either with another or by yourself", so that neither solitude may rouse you to what is unfitting nor company make your fault easy to excuse.

Then he added the reason, the only one that turns us away from evils: "and above all, feel shame before yourself". For if you accustom yourself to feel shame before yourself, you will have everywhere one before whom you will feel shame, a guardian most intimately your own and impossible to escape. For many, when left alone by friends or servants, have done the very things they were ashamed to do before because of them. Had they, then, no one with them? I leave God aside, for he is too far removed from the awareness of the wicked; but did they not have themselves, and the tribunal of conscience? They had indeed; but they did not know that they had it, being overpowered by their passions. Such people held the rational part within them in no honour, and treated it as viler than a slave. Take yourself, then, as the guardian most intimately your own, and, turning back towards him, begin the turning away from evils. For each man's shame before himself necessarily becomes the avoidance of things shameful and unworthy of the rational being. How he who thus disdains evils is brought into kinship with virtue, he tells us next.

### X · Verses 13–16

[10.0] [13] Next, practise justice in deed and in word,
 [14] and do not accustom yourself to act thoughtlessly in anything;
 [15] but know that death is appointed for all,
 [16] and that wealth is wont now to be gained, now to be lost.
[10.1] He who feels shame before himself becomes his own guard against ever falling into vice. But vice has several forms. In the rational part it is folly; in the spirited part, cowardice; in the appetitive part, love of pleasure and love of money; and in all the powers together, injustice. So we needed a tetrad of virtues to turn away such evils: practical wisdom for the reasoning part, courage for the spirited part, temperance for the appetitive part, and justice for all the powers together — justice being the most perfect of all the virtues and containing the others as its own parts. That is why the discourse mentioned it first; then practical wisdom, and after it the best practices that are born of practical wisdom and contribute to the completeness of justice. For he who uses right reasoning acquires courage as his ally in dangers, temperance in pleasures, and justice in all things together. And thus practical wisdom is found to be the beginning of the virtues, justice their end, and courage and temperance in between.

For the power that reasons out all things and always seeks what is suitable to each in our actions, so that each may be disposed reasonably, is the state of practical wisdom. It is the best disposition of our rational being, and from it good order comes to the other powers too, so that the spirit is courageous, desire temperate, and justice holds to proportion; and in this way our mortal man is adorned from the abundance of the virtue that is in the immortal man. For the virtues shine primarily from the intellect into the rational soul, and they are its proper form, its perfection and its well-being; while into the irrational part and the mortal body there comes a certain participation in the virtues, so that what has grown together with the rational being may also be filled with seemliness and measure.
[10.2] This practical wisdom, the leader of the divine goods, when it has been well established in the rational soul, enables us to deliberate well about everything, to bear death courageously and the loss of wealth gently and with composure. For practical wisdom is able to endure all the vicissitudes of mortal nature, and of the fortune that follows it, with temperance and without dismay. For it has reckoned out the nature of things, and knows that what was compounded of earth and water must of necessity be dissolved into them again; and it does not rage against necessity, nor does it hold that our affairs are without providence if what is mortal dies. For it knows "that death is appointed for all", and that there is a fixed time for the continuance of our mortal bodies; and when this arrives we must not be aggrieved, but follow willingly, as a divine law. For this is what "appointed" signifies here: that our mortal life is bounded by certain necessary limits; and that it is proper to practical wisdom to follow the decrees of the superior beings, since practical wisdom seeks not to avoid dying but to die well.

Likewise it is not ignorant of the nature of wealth either: that now it has come and now it has gone, according to certain definite causes, which it is foolish to resist. For we are not masters of the acquisition of things that are not in our power. Not in our power are the body and wealth, and, in a word, whatever lies outside our rational being: neither to acquire them in the first place is in our power, nor to keep them as long as we wish. But to receive them when they come and to part with them when they go, and to do so with virtue — this is in our power and proper to the rational being, if it does not accustom itself to behave thoughtlessly about what happens, but follows the divine measures by which all that concerns us is defined. Here, then, what is in our power has its greatest force: in judging well about what is not in our power, and not, through an inordinate attachment to these things, losing the virtue of self-determination as well.

What, then, does sensible judgment say? To use the body and wealth well while they are present, and for the service of virtue; and when they depart, to know what is right, and to gain, besides the other virtues, freedom from grief. For in this way piety towards the gods will be kept, and the measures of justice, if the rational part learns to use circumstances well and nobly, and to set the rules of practical wisdom against the things that seem to happen by chance and without order. For otherwise virtue could not be kept, unless a certain right belief is present in the rational being. For it cannot follow the superior beings as superior, but will be disposed like one coerced by tyrants; nor will it take any account of those who live with it, nor discover the best management of body or of wealth, once it has accustomed itself to behave thoughtlessly. For see how those who flee death at any cost, or long to keep their money, will necessarily resort to many acts of injustice and blasphemy: when they fall into what they senselessly fled, they utter unholy curses against the gods and declare that they exercise no providence; and they wrong others unsparingly, and try to amass everyone's goods for what they think is their own advantage. And so the harm done by false belief becomes manifest in them, in that the greatest of evils spring up: injustice towards their equals and impiety towards the superior beings.

From these he would be pure who obeys the verses before us: he who by well-reasoned judgment nobly endures death, and does not think the loss of wealth unbearable. From these he also takes his starting points towards justice: that one must abstain from what belongs to others, harm no one, and not make the misfortunes of others one's own profit. But none of these things will be kept by the man who supposes that his own soul is mortal and has accustomed himself to behave thoughtlessly, never reckoning what it is in us that dies and has need of wealth, and what it is that practises virtue and is benefited by it. For only the distinction between these could supply eagerness for the practice of virtue, and the inspired impulse that comes from "Know yourself" and "Feel shame before yourself" could rouse us to the acquisition of what is noble. For it is by our own worth that we must measure our duties towards others as well, in deeds and in words. And the unswerving keeping of our duties would be justice; that is why it is set before the other virtues, to become the measure of duties. For "practise justice", he says, "in deed and in word". You will not, then, speak any blasphemy when you lose your wealth or suffer the pains of disease, so that you may not be unjust in word; nor will you seize what belongs to your neighbours or contrive misfortunes for men, so that you may not be unjust in deed. For while justice garrisons the soul, we shall do what is fitting both towards men and towards ourselves.
[10.3] But the best measure of justice is practical wisdom. Hence to "practise justice" he added "and do not accustom yourself to act thoughtlessly in anything", since justice cannot subsist without practical wisdom. For that is truly just which perfect practical wisdom defines. And this would be the practical wisdom that is thoughtless about nothing, but is circumspect about the body and circumspect also about what contributes to its needs; that counts all things less precious than virtue, and holds as the greatest benefit the best disposition of the rational soul, by which everything else too is adorned according to its capacity.

Such, then, is the aim of the verses before us: to set forth the tetrad of the practical virtues and hand it down to the hearers, together with the wakeful watchfulness and vigilance that befits words and deeds. For one part of them delivers practical wisdom, another courage, another temperance; the part placed before them urges the practice of justice, which is observed in common over all the other virtues; and the words "wealth is wont now to be gained, now to be lost" show that liberality, too, accompanies the temperate disposition, liberality being a virtue concerned with the income and expenditure of money. For to acquire it and to part with it only when reason allows removes in advance the occasions of meanness and of prodigality.
[10.4] All these things proceed, as from a source and first principle, from feeling shame before oneself. And this precept already embraces within itself "Know yourself", which must underlie all earnest actions and all contemplative knowledge. For otherwise how shall we know that it befits us to moderate our passions and to know the things that are? For doubts are raised about these: first, whether they are possible for men; then, whether they are beneficial to those who possess them. For, quite the contrary, the virtuous man seems to come off worse in the affairs of life, because he does not take unjustly from where he should not, and spends justly on what he should; and as to the body he lies more open to attack than anyone, since he neither seeks office himself nor servilely courts those in office. So that, if there were not some other being in us that is benefited by virtue, we would hardly give up wealth or power for its sake. Hence those who think the soul mortal are being clever rather than truthful when they speak of not abandoning virtue. For if there were not something of us that remains after death, and this of a nature to be adorned with truth and virtue — such as we say the rational soul is — there could be no pure longing in us for what is noble. For the suspicion of perishing stifles in advance all earnestness about these things, and leads us to bodily enjoyments, of whatever kind they may be and from wherever they can be procured. For how, on their view, will it seem the part of a sensible or moderately composed man not to gratify the body in everything, since it is through the body that even the existence of the soul is preserved — the soul not existing by itself, but supervening upon a certain configuration of the body? And how shall we give up the body for the sake of virtue, when we are about to destroy the soul itself together with the body, so that the virtue, for love of which we endured death, is nowhere? But concerning these matters it has been sufficiently demonstrated by divine men both that the soul is immortal and that it is by nature adorned by virtue alone.
[10.5] Now, having set our seal on the present doctrine, let us pass on to what follows, adding only this much to what has been said: that just as all vice flows in through ignorance of our own being, so through knowledge of ourselves, and disdain for what does not befit the rational nature, the unerring keeping of our duties is found in every case; and this becomes the measure of the particular virtues. For by looking to our own being as to a rule, we find what is due in all things, living according to right reason in harmony with our own being. For everything that makes the soul better and leads it up to the well-being that befits its nature is truly virtue and the law of philosophy; but what aims only at human decorum is servile sophistry and a shadow-painting of what is noble, hunting the praise of the many and taking all its care to seem good, not to be good. So much for these things.
[10.6] It follows of necessity from right reasoning that we should not behave thoughtlessly about the things that seem to happen in life without order either, but should have well and nobly reasoned out their causes, and bear them without complaining of the beings who have the care of us. For they, distributing to each what is fitting according to worth, have not judged all those who did not live alike in their former lives worthy of equal things. For if there is providence, and our soul is incorruptible in essence but moves towards virtue or vice by a self-moved choice, how could the guardians of the law that requires each to be treated according to his deserts render equal things to those who are unequal, and not assign to each the fitting fortune, which man is said to receive by lot when he comes forth into generation? If, then, it is no myth that there is a providence which assigns to each what befits him, and that our soul is immortal, it is clear that we must transfer the cause of our sufferings from the one who governs all to ourselves; and from this, reason will grant us the power to heal our hardships as well. For when we have found in ourselves the causes of so great an inequality, first, by the rightness of our judgment we shall lighten the burden of what befalls us; then, by the sacred methods and by right admonitions retuning the soul to what is better, we shall set ourselves wholly free from what is painful.

But when a man suffers ill, not even to perceive the causes, nor to divine what is fittingly befalling him, is the mark of one who has accustomed himself to behave thoughtlessly about everything — which the discourse has now forbidden. For whoever has not sought out the true cause must transfer the charge to the superior being: either that it does not exist at all, or that it does not care for us rightly. And such opinions not only intensify the evils that come from a former life, but also rouse the soul to every kind of wickedness, and deprive it of its self-determined healing, by adding hidden causes to the troubles it now endures. How one ought to philosophise about these matters, hear from the verses themselves.

### XI · Verses 17–20

[11.0] [17] Of all the pains that mortals suffer by divine fortunes,
 [18] whatever lot you have, bear it gently and do not chafe at it.
 [19] Yet it is fitting to heal it as far as you can; and consider this:
 [20] the lot does not give very much of these to the good.
[11.1] Before we go further in the explanation, this must first be said: that by "pains" he here means the things that are laborious and that make the road of life rougher for us — such as disease, poverty, the loss of those dearest to us, and want of honour in one's city. For these are indeed hard, and difficult to manage in the course of life; yet they are not truly evils, nor are they harmful to the soul itself, unless the soul itself chooses to decline into vice on account of one of them — which it might suffer equally in the case of things that seem good, if it is not willing to make a good use of them, such as health, wealth and power. For it is possible to become bad even in these, and to acquire virtue in their opposites. But the things that are truly evil are the faults committed by choice, with which virtue by its nature cannot enter in together. These are injustice, licentiousness, and everything that does not admit of being yoked with the noble. For with none of these can one join the word "nobly": one does not say, "he is unjust nobly," "he is licentious nobly," as we say of external evils, "he is ill nobly," "he is poor nobly," when a man bears such things well and in accordance with right reason. To the vices of the soul the word "nobly" is not applied, because they are turnings-away from right reason and failures of it — the reason which is present in the human soul by nature and inscribed in it, but which the soul overlooks, blinded by passionate attachment.
[11.2] A proof that right reason is present in men is this: that even the unjust man, in matters where nothing is at stake for him, judges justly, and the licentious man temperately; and, in a word, the bad man makes use of right apprehensions wherever he is free from passionate attachment. This is why the base man is able to change over to virtue by condemning his former vice. Yet it does not follow that there must also be present in us a reason which is not right, to be the principle of the vices as the other is of the virtues. For right reason, by its presence, is sufficient — like the law in a city — to distinguish what is done in accordance with it from what is done against it, and to approve the one and correct the other. And there is no need of a principle of evils, whether one that lies within us or one that implants an evil-working cause from without; but there is need, above all and alone, of a principle of goods: both of one separate from rational beings, such as God is, and of one present within them and governing them by an essential contact, such as right reason is.
[11.3] Such, then, is the distinction among evils. Of these, he says that it is not those which depend on choice that are allotted to men by divine fortune, but those which depend on circumstance — things which now lie among what is not in our power, but which long ago followed upon faults of choice: painful, as we said, yet capable of receiving the ornament that comes from virtue. For a temperate way of life has adorned poverty; practical wisdom has redeemed a mean extraction; and the just life has borne the loss of children gently — the life that can say, "My child is dead? Then he has been given back," and, "I knew that I had begotten a mortal." And in the same way all other things too, when clothed with the beauty of virtue, become more seemly.
[11.4] Next the discourse inquires what these divine fortunes are, according to which mortals meet with outward hardships. For if the divine judgment, of its primary intent, gives wealth to this man and poverty to another, this ought to be called a divine choice, and not fortune. And if nothing presides over the allotment of such things, but it falls out at random and of itself that one man is fortunate, as they say, and another unfortunate, this ought to be called fortune, and not divine fortune. But if the God who governs us apportions to each what is fitting according to his desert, and is not the cause of our being of this kind or of that, but is sole master of rendering requital according to the ordinances of justice, then with good reason did he join the two words and call the sentences of the judgment "divine fortunes": insofar as that which judges is divine and intellective, he called them "divine" (daimoniai), that is, knowing; and insofar as that which is judged becomes bad by its own choice, and so becomes deserving of these hardships, he added the word "fortunes" — because it is not God's purpose, of his primary intent, to punish or to honour this or that particular person, but always the one who has become of such or such a kind; and the cause of this lies in us. The interweaving, then, of our choice with his judgment produces fortune, so that the whole of this — the divine sentence upon our faults — is "divine fortune." And thus the skilful invention of the names brings in together both the divine superintendence and the soul's self-determination and immortality; and it shows that neither do all things come about by fate or by providence, nor at random and by chance, nor is all our life disposed by our own unaided choice. Rather, whatever faults we commit among the things in our power are to be referred to choice; whatever follows upon those faults according to the laws of justice, to fate; the goods bestowed by God of his primary intent, to providence; while to the random and the chance we must refer the cause of nothing that is, nor even of anything that comes to be — except that, by accident, through the interweaving of what is brought about primarily by providence, fate and choice, the element of chance will follow upon the first-working causes.
[11.5] Take an example. The judge wishes to punish the murderer, and not this particular man; yet he punishes this man too, whom he did not wish to punish, when the man has himself put himself into the rank of murderer. And the judge's sentence against the murderer is primary, while the sentence against this particular man is accidental, because he willingly assumed the character of the murderer. And again, the wicked man wished to murder, but was unwilling to pay the penalty for it. So that in his case too the murderous disposition is primary, as depending on the soul's self-determination, while the rackings and tortures that follow upon it follow by accident. And the cause of all these is the law, which both implants in the judge the choice to punish the wicked and brings upon the murderer the sentence of punishment. Reckon, I pray you, this same thing in the case of the divine superintendence too: when a human choice has willed to do evil, and the choice of judges who guard the law strives by every means to correct evils, their concurrence produces divine fortune, according to which he who has wrought such deeds becomes deserving of such punishments. The choosing of what is base refers its cause to the self-determination of the one judged; the punishment that follows according to desert, to the law-guarding knowledge of the judges; and what brings the two together is the law, which ordained that all things should be good so far as possible, and nothing base. For this law, pre-existing in the goodness of God, does not allow the wicked to go unaccountable, lest evil, remaining in them, drive them into complete insensibility to the good — of which the justice administered by the guardians of the law supplies the necessary reminder.
[11.6] The law, then, as has been said, brings together those whose nature is to judge and those whose nature is to become bad, working out through both its own proper good. For if paying the penalty is more profitable than not paying it, and justice looks to the correction of the excess of evils, it is plain that the law has joined these two kinds together for benefiting and being benefited: setting the judging kind, as guardian of the law, over the other, and handing over the kind whose nature is to err and be judged, as transgressor of the law, to the better kind, to be dealt with according to its desert, so that it may at some time come to recollection and awareness of the law through which it suffers ill. For the law which men deny in doing ill, they long for in suffering ill. For example, the man who does wrong wishes that there were no God, so that he may not have the penalty hanging over him like the stone of Tantalus; but the man who is wronged wishes that there be a God, so that he may obtain help for what he has suffered. That is why those who do wrong must be brought round in their turn to being wronged, so that what they did not see in doing, drunk with the passion of greed, they may learn in suffering, schooled by the pain of loss — if, that is, they undergo their penalty well. But if through the recklessness of their choice they still grow worse, they themselves are perhaps less benefited; yet they certainly become an instructive example to those who are right-minded and able to perceive the causes of such sufferings.
[11.7] Let us accept these as the most sovereign principles of the judgment: the goodness of God; the law that proceeds from it; and the right reason within us, which is transgressed and offended against as though it were an indwelling god. And the outcome of the judgment is these "pains," as he calls them — all that makes our life rougher through injuries to the body and to outward things. These the present discourse bids us bear gently, taking to heart their causes, cutting them down as far as possible, and turning to our benefit what seems harmful — above all by making ourselves worthy of the divine goods through the highest virtue. But if anyone does not yet aspire to this, let him at least attain the civic goods through the middle virtue. For this was what we are enjoined to do, in order to suffer painful things well and to heal them. What, then, is the cure, if not all that has been said above, from which both the reasonable endurance of pains and the method of treating them are shown?
[11.8] The sum of what has been said is this: God, being at once lawgiver and judge, establishes goods and abolishes evils; and therefore he is in no way the cause of evils. But those who have become bad by self-determined impulses, and have forgotten the right reason within them, he punishes — as bad, by the law that forbids evils; and as men, by the supervening interweaving of the law with their choice, which we call fortune. For the law does not punish a man simply as man, but as bad. And of his becoming bad his choice held the first cause; but once he has become bad (which was in our power and not in God's), then he pays the penalty (which was in the power of the divine law and not in ours). And the only aim of the law that could be both befitting God and beneficial to us is to cut short vice, to purge it away by the manifold corrections of justice, and to turn the soul that has fallen under wickedness back to the recollection of right reason. And so, while the law stands fast and always pronounces the same things, each man, making his desert now one thing and now another, does not always meet with the same things; for that would be neither just nor to our advantage. It is the change in the one judged that brings about the change in the judgment: for how can one who has not remained the same be deemed worthy of the same things?
[11.9] One must, therefore, bear the divine fortunes well, and not chafe while paying the penalty, but be purified — so far as the divine judgment is concerned — through the very things that seem to be hindrances to the comfort of life here. And such reasoning becomes both a healing of past faults and a turning back to the right reason that is within us. For how shall the man who holds painful things to be the fruits of vice not flee the cause that brings him down into them? And if one must be angry amid what is grievous, will he not think he ought to be angry with himself rather than with God, who checks wickedness through the instruments of justice — instruments through which we may understand and recollect how good a thing it was, after all, not to stand apart from the divine laws, nor to become bad of our own will? For painful things are not distributed to men at random, if indeed God and the bounds of justice preside over us, bringing upon each the lot he deserves. Therefore it is reasonable too that painful things do not befall the good very much.
[11.10] For, first, they will bear them gently, through their contentment with the divine judgment and through the acquisition of virtue, by which hard things become gentler. And their life is full of good hope that for the future such things will in no way trouble us, since, if we have become good, the divine goods are laid up for us according to the highest virtue, and the human goods according to the middle state. Then, too, they will heal such things as far as they can, from the very fact of bearing them gently, being taught the methods of their treatment. For how is it possible to make use of sacred supplications in a manner befitting the gods, unless we hold that providence and justice watch over human affairs, and that our soul, being immortal, meets on each occasion with such outward things as it has made itself worthy of by the movements of its choice? For the man who does not refer his present lot to these causes — whence will he take the starting-points for bearing it gently? Whence the art of healing it? It is impossible to say. For one cannot be content with such things directly, as though they were indifferent, or even better than their opposites, since in themselves they appear to be things to be avoided, being painful and laborious. And our nature does not embrace such things as desirable for their own sake, unless some good is expected in return for the patient endurance of hardships. It follows of necessity, then, that one is vexed, is filled with discontent, and aggravates one's pains still further out of ignorance about our own essence — and pays the penalty none the less; and, worse, that we acquire the greatest vice, if we think the universe to be without providence or badly cared for. And this is the same as thinking that God does not exist, or that, existing, he exercises no providence, or that, exercising providence, he is not good and just — opinions which hold together every kind of impiety and which drive the man who is possessed by such notions into every vice. For as piety has shown itself to be the mother of the virtues, so the falling away from piety is the leader of all vice.
[11.11] He alone, then, will find the cure of these things who has been thoroughly taught to bear them gently. And this comes through philosophy alone, which knows exactly the essences of all beings and the activities that follow upon their essences, whose sequence and ordered arrangement is the governance of the universe — from which, too, the divine fortunes are necessarily apportioned; and the desert apportioned to each, which is here called "lot" (moira), depends on the providence of God, on the good order of the cosmos, and on human choice. For if there were no providence of God, there would be no order in the cosmos — which one might also call fate. And if these did not exist, there would be no justice and judgment of the wicked, nor any honour and approval of the good. But since providence and order exist, all who are now born ought to meet with equal goods, if they had contributed nothing of their own towards the inequality. Yet they plainly do not meet with equal things. It is clear, then, that the inequality of choice, submitted to the judgment of providence, does not permit an equal lot to be apportioned to them, if indeed they must meet with what accords with their desert.
[11.12] Nor let it trouble us that the same unevenness appears in irrational animals, in plants, and even in inanimate things, as among men. For it does not follow that our affairs are unprovided for because these things befall those beings at random; nor that there are among them too justice and judgment and reckonings of virtue and vice because our affairs are so exactly regulated. For, first, inanimate things are set out as common matter for plants, animals and men; next, plants are set before animals and men as common food, and some animals too before animals and men. Hence these act upon one another without considering the desert of those that suffer, but relieving their own hunger or sickness, and in general filling up their own want from wherever they can. So that our need, filled from whatever lies at hand, is the occasion of misfortune for animals, and our fondness for them is the cause of their seeming good fortune. Now if the argument, as it went on, had introduced in turn some other beings superior to us, who made use of us to fill up their own want as we are seen to use irrational creatures, we should have to admit that those beings were mortal, and human bodies would be seen to be consumed for their need. But if nothing of what stands above man is mortal (since man himself is the last of the rational kinds, and for this reason, though immortal, comes into a mortal body through a change of condition, and, taking up an instrument akin to the irrational creatures, lives his life upon earth), then there can be nothing that would use our misfortunes for its own feast; and therefore nothing that would make disorderly use of us in its eagerness to be filled. Justice and order, then, lay down for the immortals who stand above us the bounds of their governance concerning us: to contrive for us those things which lessen our vice here and are able to turn us back towards them. For they care for us as for kinsmen who have fallen. Hence Reverence and Nemesis and Shame, which turn us away from evils, are rightly said to have regard for men alone; for the rational animal alone is by nature capable of perceiving justice.
[11.13] It is fitting, then, that we, who are separated from the irrational creatures by the widest bounds, should also be under a governance that differs very greatly from theirs. For the ordinance of providence too is proportioned to the essences of beings; and as each thing was brought into existence by the Demiurgic God, so is it also deemed worthy of providence. And it appears that, in the case of human souls, he brought each one into existence himself, but in the case of irrational creatures only the kinds, handing them over to the nature that moulds them — as is the view of Plato and of Timaeus the Pythagorean, who hold that nothing mortal is an immediate work of God, but that human souls come to be from the same mixing-bowl as the encosmic gods and the daemons, that is, the illustrious heroes. Therefore providence extends to men individually, one by one: how each departs from the things there; how he inclines towards the things here; how he lives here; how he may be brought back from here to there. None of this need be considered in regard to irrational life. For it did not descend hither through being unable to follow a god; nor can it sojourn on earth as a heavenly plant; nor is it of a nature to be led back up to some consort star.
[11.14] Let this, for the present, serve as our defence against the malcontents who, from every quarter, build up the case for a world without providence. To them it is right to say this too: that from bearing hardships gently the human way of life shows itself reasonable, both lightening hardships for the present and healing them for the future. But you, by chafing, what good will you do — unless it be only to add to your toils the greatest of evils, impiety, and to make the hardships themselves rougher for yourselves by thinking that you suffer them beyond your desert? For the sick man who frets at being sick will, for that very reason, be the sicker. Therefore one must not be angry when requital is made according to desert, lest through blasphemous discontent at our present lot we come into a still worse condition. Let us look at it this way too. If someone who has fallen into poverty bears it gently, then besides the freedom from grief that gentleness brings, he will also find some consolation for his life: on the one hand, because his reasoning, not being confounded by grief, finds means of a reasonable livelihood; on the other, because his neighbours, admiring his sensible endurance, help as far as they can to provide him with the necessities of life. But the man who chafes and grows bitter like a woman first brings upon himself voluntary griefs besides; then, bound fast to lamenting his poverty, he becomes utterly without resource, neither having the leisure to contribute anything himself towards a livelihood, nor receiving any contribution from his neighbours, except what someone may toss him out of pity — which in turn, through the disposition of the giver, only increases the grief of the man reduced to such need.
[11.15] From all that has been said, then, one must bear what befalls gently, and heal it as far as one can, reckoning out its causes by undistorted notions, and seeing that, since providence exists, the man who has now become good is not neglected, even though he drags after him the brands of ancient wrath. For by the very acquiring of virtue he escapes their painfulness and finds their cure, bringing from himself the help of freedom from grief, and receiving from providence release from hardships. For our own vice, and the divine judgment that punishes wickedness, heaped up these hardships; and with reason they are dissolved again both by our own virtue and by the law of providence, which releases from evils those who by their own efforts have advanced towards the good.
[11.16] So much we may take from these verses too, in the way of doctrines that contribute to the elements of virtue. For they have been shown to contain the truest accounts of providence, of fate, and of what is in our power, by which the discourse has set straight the difficulty raised by the unevenness of appearances, and has shown throughout that God is not the cause of any evil. And if one joins these to what went before, a single argument will emerge from them all, confirming the everlastingness of the soul. For the practice of justice, dying nobly, and a liberal disposition towards wealth require most of all, for their establishment, that the soul does not die together with the body, as has already been said. And the bearing of divine fortunes gently, and the being able to heal them, has now been shown to require that the soul is not born together with the body. From both it is demonstrated that the soul is superior to generation and corruption, and is an essence other than the mortal body, being in and by itself everlasting. For it is not possible that something which has come forth into generation from some point in time should endure for ever, just as it is not possible that what has its existence from everlasting should ever admit of corruption. If, then, the human soul, enduring after the corruption of the body, meets with justice and judgment, and receives the requitals due to its desert for what it practised in life, and if it is not possible for what has come to be from a point in time to endure for ever, it is clear that it existed before this too, through all time. And thus the human soul too is found to be among the everlasting offspring of the Demiurgic God; and from this it has its share in likeness to God. But since this too has received a moderate reminder, it is time to consider what follows.

### XII · Verses 21–24

[12.0] [21] Many words, both base and noble, fall upon men's ears;
 [22] be not dismayed by them, nor yet let yourself
 [23] be kept from them. But if some falsehood is spoken,
 [24] yield gently.
[12.1] Human choice, since it is fixed neither always in virtue nor always in vice, has also given birth to the words that go forth through the voice as inclining both ways, since they resemble its own contrary dispositions. Hence some words have come to be true and others false, some good and others bad. This difference requires a discernment grounded in knowledge, so that we may choose the better and reject the worse, and may neither fall sick of an utter misology because we condemn the worse words, nor admit all words without distinction because we accept the better. For misology brings with it that we deprive ourselves even of good words, and an undiscerning love of words that we are harmed, without noticing it, by words that have been corrupted. Let us therefore practise the love of words, but together with the best judgment, so that the love of hearing may draw in every kind of word, while judgment thrusts away the worse. And in this way we shall keep the Pythagorean precept, neither being overawed by the wicked among words and admitting them without examination for this very reason, that they are words; nor being kept away from the good, because they were words just like the worse. For, in the first place, the one kind should not be pursued in so far as they are words, but in so far as they are true; nor should the other be condemned as words, but as false. And, in the second place, we may boldly assert this too: that only true words are words (logoi). For they alone preserve the dignity of rational being, and are the offspring of a soul that is stretched up towards the best and possesses its own proper order; whereas false words are not truly words at all, for, since they carry one towards vice and false opinion, they have renounced the nobility of words, and are the utterances of a soul bereft of reason and defiled with passions.
[12.2] Receive them not all, then, he says, lest you receive the false as well; nor reject them all, lest you reject the true as well. For either course is absurd: to hate the good together with the worse, or to admit the false for the sake of the better. We ought, then, to praise the good, and, having received them, to exercise ourselves in them, and to examine in what way and how far they lay hold of the truth; and against the false we must acquire the power to contend — the power, namely, which the science of logic supplies for discerning truth from falsehood. And when we are able to overthrow falsehoods, we ought to do it neither with vehemence nor insultingly, but to pursue the truth with gentleness and to refute falsehood with kindly arguments, and, as the verse itself says, "if some falsehood is spoken," to "yield gently" — not granting that the matter is as it is said to be, but hearing it without anger. For by "yield gently" he does not mean that we should give our assent to the falsehood, but that we should hear it with patience, and not be dismayed if some, being men, have fallen away from the truth to their own harm. For the nature of man is fruitful in many perverse opinions, whenever it does not rightly follow the common notions. It is no wonder, then, says the argument, if a man who has neither learned nor discovered anything of the truth has come to such a pitch of folly as to adopt opinions contrary to the truth. On the contrary, it would be a wonder if someone who is willing neither to learn nor to seek should stumble upon the truth of his own accord, as if some god had appeared to him, as in a tragedy. We must therefore hear with indulgence those who speak falsely, and learn by experience from what evils we ourselves have been purified: through the fellowship of a kindred nature we are subject to the same passions, but through the evil-averting power of knowledge we have come to stand on the opposite side of them. And the confidence that knowledge inspires also contributes greatly to gentleness; for a soul that is sufficiently prepared to overcome the deviations from truth will bear false opinions without disturbance, having reckoned out beforehand, in its very apprehension of the truth, everything that departs from the truth. What, then, will disturb such a man as though it were insoluble? What will give him an impression of strength, when he has already overcome every falsehood in advance? It is not, then, from moral virtue alone that the man of knowledge will have his freedom from disturbance, but also from his confidence in contests of this kind.
[12.3] So much for the discernment of words that is grounded in knowledge. As to the state, proof against deception in all things, which the man of knowledge ought to possess, he immediately adds:

### XIII · Verses 24–26

[13.0] [24] And what I tell you now, let it be fulfilled in every case:
 [25] let no one by word or deed induce you
 [26] to do or say what is not best for you.
[13.1] This precept extends to all things, and is equivalent to what was said somewhere above:
[13.2] [11] Never do anything shameful, either with another
 [12] or by yourself; and above all, feel shame before yourself.
[13.3] For the man who has learned to feel shame before himself, and who, neither in solitude nor in company, will tolerate the doing of anything shameful, but who, because of the reason that keeps guard within him, banishes even the very image of such a thing — he is the one who is able now to hear: "let no one by word or deed induce you." For he alone is proof against deception, and in no way easily misled by anyone, who knows his own worth and is neither cajoled by flatteries nor humbled by those who try to frighten him, whether it be enemies or friends who hold out either of these. For in the words "no one" every person is included: father and tyrant, friend and enemy. And the ways of leading astray come about either through words or through deeds: through the words of those who flatter or threaten, and through the deeds of those who hold out gifts or punishments. Against all these, therefore, we must keep the soul walled about with right reason, so that it may be neither wheedled nor enslaved by the pleasant and painful things that in any way befall us from without. For right reason, dwelling within us, sets temperance and courage on either side of the soul as adamantine guards, and so will keep us undeceived both by the flattery of what is agreeable and by the terror of what is fearful; and upon these follows exact justice, which he commanded above that we practise in deed and in word.

By this means, then, no one will in any way prevail upon us to let fall a word or to commit a deed that is not in harmony with right reason. For if above all things we feel shame before ourselves, it is clear that no one will appear to us more worthy of reverence, or more to be feared, than ourselves, so as to induce us to say or do anything contrary to what is fitting. For each of these is harmful to the soul; and what is hurtful to the soul is unprofitable to us as well, since we are the soul.
[13.4] We must, then, understand exactly the words "what is not best for you," referring the pronoun "you" to that which you properly are. If, then, as the verse says, no one, either by deeds or by words, is to lead you astray to do or say anything that is not profitable to you — and you, as we said, are the rational soul — then you will not, if you are wise, tolerate one who does harm to you, who are a rational being. For you are the soul; the body is yours; and external things belong to the body. By this distinction you will both keep the natures unconfused and discover what the human essence is, never supposing that the body or external things are yourself, nor being over-anxious for them as though for yourself, so that you may not be dragged down into love of the body and love of riches. For, in general, while we are ignorant of what we are, we shall be ignorant also of what we ought to care for, and shall care for anything rather than for ourselves, for whom our care ought to come first. For if that which uses the body is the soul, and the body holds the rank of an instrument in relation to it, and all other things were devised for the sake of the instrument, to support its ever-flowing nature, it is clear that our chief and first care ought to be for what rules and is first, and our second care for what is second. Hence the wise man will not neglect even his health: not that he considers the body the principal thing, but he trains it for the needs of the soul, so that it may obey the soul's activities without hindrance; and in the third place he will care for the things that are third, managing external things for the preservation of the instrument. His first care, then — perhaps even his only care — will be for the soul, since the care of the things that come after it tends towards its progress.
[13.5] Now everything that is contrary to virtue is, as we said, "what is not best for you"; for to whom virtue is profitable, to him what is contrary to it is unprofitable. He therefore advises us to throw about ourselves a rampart that guards the virtues, when he tells us that we must never obey one who tries to lead us away from virtue, by whatever deeds or words he brings to bear his attempt at a persuasion that turns us aside to the worse. For example: let no tyrant, whether holding out promises or making them good in deed, whether alarming you with threats or forcing you with torments; let no friendly face that hides its deceit under the show of intimacy — let none of these lead you away from what is profitable to the soul. And the only things that benefit the soul, as we said, are truth and virtue. You will be proof against deception if, knowing your own essence — what it is and what it naturally resembles — you always take care to become like that, and regard everything that leads you away from that likeness as the greatest loss. For this, as we said, is "what is not best for you": whatever leads you away from likeness to God; since what is "best" for us is what carries us towards such likeness.
[13.6] What, then, could anyone offer that would be enough to draw us away from likeness to God and from philosophy? The giving of riches, or their taking away? But we have learned with right reason both how to receive these things and how to part with them, and the instability of their possession does not escape us. For what? If this man does not take them from us, will not a thief? And we shall bear their loss nobly at the hands of one who has nothing. Will not a shipwreck carry them off? And how many other ways are there that bring the ruin of riches? For these reasons we shall also make our reckoning in favour of virtue: taking in exchange for riches a voluntary poverty joined with what is noble, divesting ourselves of them for a well-reasoned cause, and purchasing virtue at the price of all the harm that he who tries to move us from it could do us.
[13.7] But he will bring tortures, and death. The answer to this is ready to hand: that it is not we who shall suffer these things, provided we keep hold of the "we"; it is the body that will be outraged, the body that will die, suffering nothing contrary to its own nature. For by nature it is mortal and divisible and subject to countless sufferings, which any chance disease inflicts more than a tyrant. Why, then, do we flee from what it is not in our power to escape, and do not rather preserve what it is in our power to keep? For what is mortal, condemned by nature to death, we cannot save from death whatever we do; but what is immortal in us (which is the soul, and is ourselves) we can adorn with virtue, if we do not grow faint-hearted before the death with which we are threatened. And if we endure this death for a well-reasoned cause, we shall adorn the necessity of nature with right choice. These, then, are the great things with which one man might threaten another, whether to suffer something or to pay a penalty; but the things within the soul are not enslaved to another, and are free, if we so will — unless, through an immoderate attachment to the body or to external things, we willingly lead our freedom into slavery, selling the good of the soul for a life of a day and for riches. These are the things the present precept teaches us to accomplish in every case, and through them the steadfastness of virtue, and its immunity to being led astray, is sealed. But let us pass on to what follows, which refers to the same doctrine.

### XIV · Verses 27–29

[14.0] [27] Deliberate before the deed, lest it turn out foolish;
 [28] to do and say senseless things is the mark of a wretched man.
 [29] But do those things that will not grieve you afterward.
[14.1] Good deliberation begets the virtues, and perfects them, and holds them together, being at once their mother, their nurse and their guardian. For when we consider in quiet in what manner we ought to live, it chooses the beauty of the virtues. And having chosen to contend nobly in all the contests on behalf of virtue, and being now accustomed to the possession of noble things, even amid the turmoil of adverse circumstances it keeps its judgment unimpaired, in no way so dismayed by the disturbances from without as to change its mind and think any other life happy than the one it had reckoned, by itself, to be the most beautiful. Hence the works of good deliberation are three: first, the choice of the best life; second, the practice of what has been chosen; third, the unwavering preservation of what has been rightly practised. Of these, the first is the reasoning that goes before the deed, laying down the principles of our actions; the middle is the reasoning that accompanies the deed, bringing each thing that is done into line with the governing principles; and the third is the reasoning that follows the deed, reckoning up what has been done and judging whether it was done as it should have been.
[14.2] Through them all the beauty of good deliberation flowers: now conceiving the virtues, now rearing them, and, in the third place, guarding them. So the beginning, the middle and the end of our goods lie in it, and through it alone come to us both release from evils and the perfection of the virtues. For since our nature is rational, and for that reason deliberative, and is brought by its own choice to deliberate well or badly, the life according to nature preserves its essence, while the choice contrary to what ought to be destroys it, so far as that is possible. Now the destruction of an immortal thing is vice, whose mother is lack of deliberation; and this the verse bids us escape, "lest it turn out foolish".
[14.3] "Foolish" things are wretched and evil things. For to say or do senseless things "is the mark of a wretched man", that is, it belongs to an ill-fated man. But if you deliberate before the deed, you will neither say nor do anything senseless — things over which those answerable to lack of deliberation must needs be grieved. For the unsoundness of a choice is exposed by regret, once experience has shown the harm, just as, conversely, the nobility of good deliberation leads to steadfastness in the choice, displaying its benefit in the very deeds. And the benefit meant is not that of the body, nor that of external things, but that of ourselves, to whom it is enjoined both to deliberate before the deed and to do those things "that will not grieve" us — and by "us" is plainly meant the soul.
[14.4] For what profit is there in plundering wealth by perjuries, or murders, or any other evil deeds, and in being rich in outward things, while the soul is impoverished of the goods that properly belong to it? And either to be insensible of this, and for that very reason to intensify the evil; or else, dragged by conscience into a sense of what one has done, to be racked in soul and to dread the places of punishment in Hades; and to find as the only cure a flight into non-being — whence it occurs to him to cure evil with evil, consoling his vice with the destruction of the soul, and to condemn himself to nothingness after death, so as to escape the pains of the judgment? For the bad man does not wish his soul to be immortal, lest he remain to suffer punishment. And so he forestalls the judge there, condemning himself to utter death, as though it were fitting that the wicked soul should not even exist. But he, having been carried down into vice by lack of deliberation, naturally pronounces sentence against himself without measure; whereas the judges in Hades, since they make their judgment by the rule of truth, do not judge that the soul ought not to exist, but that it ought not to be wicked. They take pains to moderate its evil, inflicting punishments for the preservation of its nature, and, after the manner of a physician, treating malignant ulcers with the knife and the cautery; and while exacting penalties for faults, they seek to efface wickedness through the soul's repentance — not removing its essence from being, but rather leading it back into being by purging it of the passions that defile it. For the human soul is in danger of being carried down into non-being through its turning aside to what is contrary to nature; but by being recalled to what is according to nature it is led back up to its own essence, and recovers in its purity the being that was wasting away through its admixture with the passions.
[14.5] Therefore we must try above all not to err, and, having erred, to hasten to justice as to the healing of wickedness, correcting our lack of deliberation with the better help. For since we have fallen from being good, let us at least lay hold of becoming good, receiving the divine correction with a well-disposed regret. And this repentance becomes the beginning of philosophy, the flight from senseless deeds and words, and the first preparation for a life that knows no regret.
[14.6] For he who deliberates well before his actions does not fall into griefs against his will, nor does he unwittingly lay down principles and premises whose conclusions and outcomes he cannot welcome; rather he always orders the present, reckoning up the chances of whatever may turn out otherwise. Therefore he would neither, through expectation of so-called goods, overlook the truly good, nor, through fear of their opposites, choose to do evil; but with steadfast judgment he squares his own life by the divine rules.
[14.7] And that you may know that it "is the mark of a wretched man" to do and say senseless things, look at Medea in the tragedy, lamenting her lot. She, without deliberation, betrayed her nearest kin and, from an extravagant passion, gave herself into the hands of a foreign man; then, slighted by him, she thinks she suffers what is unbearable; and from this opinion you hear how she cries out:
[14.8] Alas! may fire from heaven strike through my head!
What gain is there for me in living any longer?
[Euripides, Medea 144–145]
[14.9] and she goes on to lawless deeds: first senselessly praying that what has happened had not happened; then, madly trying to cure evils with evils, she thinks to blot out the beginning of her lack of deliberation by a worse end, disowning her ill-considered childbearing by the headlong murder of her children. Or, if you wish, behold Homer's Agamemnon, who, paying the penalty for his immoderate anger, cries out with groans:
[14.10] My heart is not steadfast,
but I am distraught; my heart leaps out of my breast,
and my shining limbs tremble beneath me.
[14.11] And the fire of his eyes, formerly kindled by his angry disposition, he now, when his fortunes had turned against him, cooled with showers of tears. For such is every senseless life: falling this way and that into opposite passions, it is hateful in pleasures and pitiable in griefs, rash when confident and abject when afraid; and, in a word, having no share in the noble spirit of good deliberation, it changes its judgment along with fortune.
[14.12] So that we may not be filled with such tragic scenes, doing and saying senseless things, let us take right reasoning as our guide in all things, fulfilling that saying of Socrates: "I am one who can obey nothing of mine except the reason which, when I reflect, appears to me to be right." Now all that has been given for the service of the rational being — such as anger, desire, sense-perception, and the body itself, which has been taken on to serve as an instrument for these powers — is ours, but is not ourselves; and none of these ought we to obey, except, as he says, right reason, that is, the rational part disposed according to nature. For this can also discern what ought to be said and done. And to obey right reason and to obey God are the same thing. For the rational kind, once blessed with its proper illumination, wills those things which the divine law determines; and the soul disposed according to God comes to cast its vote with God, and does whatever it does looking towards the divine and the radiant. But the soul disposed in the contrary way, borne at random and as chance will have it towards the godless and the dark, wanders, having fallen away from the only standard of noble things, intellect and God.
[14.13] Such and so great are the goods of good deliberation, and the evils of the contrary disposition. Deliberating before the deed, besides its other goods, also cuts away the occasions of conceit, summons us to the acquisition of knowledge, and procures for us the most pleasant life, since it procures the best. This is made clear by the verses that follow.

### XV · Verses 30–31

[15.0] [30] Do nothing that you do not understand, but learn
 [31] what is needful; and so you will lead a most delightful life.
[15.1] Not setting our hand to what we do not know only keeps us free from error; but being taught the things that contribute to the best life provides us, besides freedom from error, with right action as well. For the awareness of our ignorance cuts away the rashness that springs from conceit, while the possession of knowledge gives our activities freedom from hindrance. Both are noble — to know that we do not know, and to come to know what we do not know; and on them follows a life at once the best and the most pleasant. This is the life that is pure of conceit and full of knowledge; that prides itself on nothing it does not know, but is willing to learn whatever is worth learning.
[15.2] And those things alone are worth learning which lead us up to likeness to God; which make us deliberate before the deed, "lest it turn out foolish"; which do not let us be led astray by anyone, either by word or by deed; which make us able to discern the differences among the words that fall upon our ears; which persuade us to bear the divine fortunes gently and to heal them, and teach fearlessness of death and poverty, and the practice of justice, and mastery of the belly and of what goes with the belly; which introduce the laws of friendship and the honour due to parents; which point out the reverence owed to the superior classes. These and the like are what the present verse says ought to be learned, and on them follows the most delightful life.
[15.3] For he who excels in virtue also reaps pleasures that bring no regret, pleasures that imitate the steadfastness of virtue. For every pleasure is by nature the accompaniment of some activity or other: it has no subsistence of its own, but follows upon us as we do this or that. Therefore the worse pleasures follow the baser activities, while pleasures of worth enter in together with the better ones; so that the good man surpasses the bad not only in nobility, but conquers him in pleasure itself — the one thing for whose sake the bad man seems to be drawn into vice. For by as much as one disposition is better than another, by so much is one pleasure more worthy of choice than another. Since, then, the life according to virtue, holding fast to likeness to God, is truly divine, while the life in vice is bestial and godless, it is clear that the pleasure of the good man imitates the divine gladness, following in the train of intellect and God, while the so-called pleasure of the bad man (let the name be granted as common to both) is likened to a bestial and frenzied motion. For pleasures and pains change us; and he who draws from them whence he should, and when, and as much as he should, is happy, while he who does not know their measures is wretched.
[15.4] Thus, then, the life that is pure of conceit is merely free of error; but the life that is also filled with knowledge acts rightly and is perfect; and this same life is at once the most pleasant and the best. Let us, then, never do what we do not know, and what we do know let us do when it is fitting. For ignorance brings in vice, while knowledge seeks the right moment; for many things that are good become bad by a change of occasion. Let us therefore hear the precept in its order: by holding us back from action it brings us freedom from error, and by urging us to learn not everything, but what we should, it leads us up to the best actions. For acting rightly does not lie in not erring, but in knowing what is needful; and the one is brought about by purification from conceit, the other by the presence of knowledge. And from not erring and from acting rightly, see what will befall you: "and so you will lead a most delightful life".
[15.5] And what life is this, if not that alone which has gained its pleasure from virtue, in which the good and the pleasant have come together? If, then, we long for the noble, and long also for the pleasant, what would the two be when joined? This, he says: the most delightful life. For he who chooses the pleasant together with the shameful, even if for a little while he is enticed by what pleases, yet on account of the shameful he comes to a painful regret. But he who prefers the noble together with toil, even if for the moment he is weighed down by its unfamiliarity, yet finds the toil lightened by its yoking with the noble, and in the end reaps, besides virtue, a pure pleasure as well. For if something shameful is done with pleasure, the pleasure passes, but the shame remains; but if something noble is done with toil, the toil passes, but the noble remains. From which it necessarily follows that the worst life is the most painful, and the best the most delightful.
[15.6] So much for these verses. And since the training of the body also has reference to the perfection of the soul, see what he adds next:

### XVI · Verses 32–34

[16.0] [32] Nor should you be careless of the body's health,
 [33] but keep measure in drink and food and exercise;
 [34] and by measure I mean what will not grieve you.
[16.1] The mortal body, given to us as an instrument for our life on earth, ought neither to be fattened by immoderate bodily training nor worn down by excessive want; for the one and the other alike become an obstacle, and destroy the use we have of it. Therefore the discourse urges us to care for it moderately, and not to overlook it either when it grows wanton or when it is troubled by diseases; so that, preserved in its natural state, it may without hindrance offer its activities to the soul that governs it, able to be led wherever the soul may lead.
[16.2] For the soul is the user, and the body is what it uses; and the craftsman must take care of his instrument. For one must not merely wish to use it, but also take all the forethought that is possible, so that it may serve us in good condition. And since its nature is established in continual generation and corruption, and filling and emptying nurse it — now food replenishing what flows away, now exercise removing what is in excess — we must set a measure to the filling by what is taken in and to the emptying by what is discharged. And the measure is the reason that harmonises the state of the body with the discursive activities of the soul, and for that reason takes care of the health befitting the philosopher. This reason, then, will choose such exercises and foods as do not fatten the body to excess, nor make it superior to the intellective motions. For it does not care for a body simply, but for a body that serves thought. Hence it will decline the athletic regimen, as one that tends the body without the soul, and will shun all so-called bodily training, as rising up against the intellective light of the soul. But so much good condition of body as can be of service to the contemplation of the mathematical sciences and to the personal performance of noble actions, this he who has chosen the life of wisdom will procure for himself.
[16.3] For it is to him that the words are addressed, "and by measure I mean what will not grieve you." Let not the measure of care for the body harm you, he says — you who are a rational soul; you, the guardian of the foregoing precepts, must choose such foods and drinks and exercises as make the body obedient to the exercise of the virtues, such as do not carry the irrational part away into rebellion against the governing reason. And you must make your measuring-out of the care of the body with the greatest attention, since you will be held answerable also for its irrational motions. For "the horse that partakes of vice is heavy" [Plato, Phaedrus 247b] — not absolutely, but when it has not been well reared by its charioteers.
[16.4] In the measure concerning the body he placed drink before food, because it is harder to guard against, slips down more easily, and more readily disturbs the good condition of the body. For a man may without noticing it drink many times more than the measure, more easily than he could eat it. Exercises are placed third, as correcting the repletion that comes from food and preparing us again to take nourishment healthily. For these two things, as it were, run in a circle and give place to one another: food and exercise, exercise and food. For being well nourished supplies the ability to exercise, and having exercised in due proportion supplies the ability to be nourished to good effect. But the measure of these differs from one person to another, since each one's care of the body tends toward his own particular pursuit. For everyone strives to make the body an instrument of his own choice: the wrestler, of the movements belonging to wrestling; the farmer, of the labours belonging to farming; and one man draws the service of the body to one end, another to another, and adapts it accordingly.
[16.5] What, then, must the philosopher do? With what end in view will he wish to train the body? And of what will he strive to make it the instrument — or is it not clear that it will be of philosophy and its works? As far, then, as it is possible for the body to become an instrument of practical wisdom, so far he will nourish and train it in every respect, caring for the soul primarily and, for its sake, for the body as well. For he will neither prefer the body to the soul that uses it, nor on the other hand neglect it entirely for the sake of the soul that uses it; but he will take care of it in the order befitting it as an instrument, referring that care to the virtue of the user and to the health of the body. Therefore he will not nourish it from every source, but only from those from which he should. For there are things that ought not to be taken, since they weigh down the body and drag the soul's connate pneuma down toward more material passions; concerning which the discourse says later:
[16.6] [67] But abstain from the foods we spoke of, in the purifications
 [68] and in the release of the soul, judging each thing.
[16.7] Such things, then, he will decline altogether; of the things it is permitted to take, he will measure the quantity and the occasion, and, as Hippocrates says, he will take careful account of "season, place and age", and of everything of that kind; not allowing us, without examination, to fill ourselves with what it is permitted to partake of, nor, without discrimination, a young man and an old man to follow the same regimen, or a healthy man and a sick one, or one who is beginning philosophy and one who has reached its summit.
[16.8] All these things the Pythagorean "measure" has comprised, by the addition of "what will not grieve you." For all that contributes to philosophic well-being in the matter of care for the body he entrusted to this brief phrase; and to what he had said before about the health of the soul he added, "Nor should you be careless of the body's health"; so that there the virtue of the user is taught, and here the preservation of the instrument. Join these, then, to those, and you will find who you are, you to whom the precept is given, and that the measure of the ordering of the body must be such as "will not grieve you": such as will not hinder the philosophic purpose, but will by its cooperation benefit the soul that is travelling toward virtue. He spoke of a measure of drink and food, the discourse forbidding excesses and deficiencies and embracing the mean and the proportionate; and from this the mastery of the belly and of sleep and lust and anger comes about easily. For the measure now spoken of chastens the want of measure in those things, and removes what grieves and drags down the soul that is hastening toward intellect and God. For as it ascends toward intellect the soul must have calm from the passionate motions, and the lower things must be well ordered for it, so that its contemplation of the things above may be undisturbed. This was the measure "that will not grieve you": this is what at once masters the belly and secures the preservation of the instrument — what displays the virtue of the soul and does not ruin the state of the body. For it is also a part of virtue to know how to preserve the instrument and to attune it to philosophic use.
[16.9] But since the care of the body lies not only in foods and exercises, but it needs many other things as well — clothing, for example, shoes, utensils of every kind, and the house that contains them — and since in these too there is need of the moderate, which banishes both luxury and uncleanness from our whole way of life, he fittingly added:

### XVII · Verses 35–38

[17.0] [35] Accustom yourself to a way of life that is clean and unpampered,
 [36] and guard against doing such things as bring envy.
 [37] Do not spend out of season, like one ignorant of what is noble,
 [38] nor be illiberal: measure is best in all things.
[17.1] Not only in foods and drinks, he says, is measure a fine thing, but in all other things too, as being pure of the faults that arise through excess and deficiency. For in all the things we have mentioned there may be a twofold want of measure: one leading out toward extravagance, the other thrusting us down toward squalor. Each is a blameworthy character and not a philosophic one, nor one that aims at due measure in bodily things. For cleanliness pushed too far is found to be effeminacy and softness, while plainness pushed too far becomes uncleanness and squalor. So that we may suffer neither the former through cleanliness nor the latter through plainness, let us walk in the middle, turning aside from the vices that lie beside each, and making each a corrective of the other: practising a way of life plain in such a way as not to be unclean, and clean in such a way as not to be luxurious. Therefore let us prefer measure in all the provision for the body, choosing clothing that is clean and unpampered, a house likewise clean and unpampered, and wishing to have everything whatever that concerns the body clean and unpampered. For since a rational soul governs the body, it is fitting that everything concerning the body too should be ordered in accordance with the governing reason, which will tolerate neither luxury nor uncleanness, since it reckons that all things must be proportioned to its own dignity.
[17.2] So that it may not be drawn about toward the acquisition of costly things, it practises what is unpampered; and so that it may not dwell with squalor and material formlessness, it chooses what is clean. For example: clothing not fine-spun, but clean; utensils not of gold or silver, but clean, of materials easily procured; a house not adorned with costly stones, nor elaborated beyond need in beauty and size, but proportioned to the needs of the body, and clean. And in general, throughout the whole way of life, it rejects the luxurious as lying outside need, and approves the clean as best fulfilling need. For a garment, a house and every utensil provide their proper use well when they are proportionate and clean. For what need is there of a great platter for a small portion of food? And what need of a dirty one, which will spoil the food? What need of a large house for those who are going to lie in one corner of it? And what need of an unclean one, which does not provide the use of a dwelling? You will find the same in other things too: what is not clean together with being unpampered is useless on either side. For the moment you overstep the measure of need, you have gone forward into the boundlessness of desire. Therefore let everything in your life be measured by the means that escape the vices lying beside them.
[17.3] "Accustom yourself," he says, "to a way of life that is clean"; then, seeing the lapse into luxury, he added "unpampered"; and had he said "unpampered" first, he would have seen the lapse into squalor too, and added "clean"; always holding us up from a fall by setting the one against the other, so that from both together our way of life may be manly and befitting a rational animal.
[17.4] And if we order our life in this way, we shall have another great good that follows from it. For we shall escape the envy that grows upon those who go to excess, since by observing "nothing too much" we do not rouse our fellow citizens against us, so that they now resent us as living in luxury, now blame us as living in squalor, and at one time accuse us as prodigals, at another as niggards. For with all such things there follows, from those who live with us, blame for the want of measure. For this is what "envy" signifies here, so that the saying means: "guard against doing such things as bring envy", that is, such as incur reasonable blame from the many. And what is blameworthy both in reason and in the eyes of the many is, in one's way of life, luxury and squalor, and in the spending of money, prodigality and meanness. Therefore let liberality and due proportion display through all external things the prudent state of the soul, and the measure that is best in all things. For, so far as lies in us, the lover of tranquillity must keep away from what arouses envy, and must not provoke envy like some wild beast, so that he may be free to advance undisturbed in noble things.
[17.5] We shall pursue a life free from envy by keeping a way of life that is plain and free from squalor, and by turning aside from the conceit of those ignorant of what is noble, from which two evils sprout: spending and sparing of money out of season; of which the one is accused of arrogance, the other of pettiness. Liberality escapes both of these, being a virtue concerned with the giving and taking of money, finding what is due in income and expenditure, and ordering all external things in accordance with right reason. So much has been taught philosophically in the Verses about the best use of the body and of external things, so that through these too the beauty of virtue may shine forth; and he makes the following precept the summation of them all.

### XVIII · Verse 39

[18.0] [39] Do those things that will not harm you, and reason before the deed.
[18.1] He has often used this kind of saying: at one time saying,
[18.2] But do those things that will not grieve you afterward;
[18.3] at another,
[18.4] and by measure I mean what will not grieve you;
[18.5] and,
[18.6] let no one by word or deed induce you
to do or say what is not best for you.
[18.7] Here, then, the discourse makes a synopsis and a single summing-up of all these, forbidding the admission of what is harmful and recommending the performance of what is beneficial; and it says that the distinction between them is rightly made by reasoning before the deed what is to be done and what is not to be done. For the time for good deliberation is while actions are still uncommitted. And here again we shall understand "which will not harm you" in the same way as "which will not grieve you afterward", applying the "you" to the true man and the rational being, and to the one who has chosen to philosophise and is eager to acquire likeness to God. And this man is harmed by everything contrary to right reason, everything contrary to the divine law, everything that hinders likeness to God. Such things naturally beset us in our association with those who live with us, and in the management both of the body yoked to us and of the things devised to assist it, which it is customary to call "goods for use" (chrēmata), as being laid out for our use (chreia). The discourse therefore says that the lover of divine goods must be thoroughly on his guard lest he ever be persuaded to do anything that is not best for him, and that he must not gratify the body with things that will grieve himself, nor accept anything harmful to his philosophic impulse, for which he will shortly afterwards repent. For it befits us to thrust all these things away by reasoning beforehand, so that the reckoning-over of what we have done may bring us the sweetest remembrance, which he next bids us make.

### XIX · Verses 40–44

[19.0] [40] Do not let sleep come upon your soft eyes
 [41] before you have reckoned over each deed of the day:
 [42] “Where did I transgress? What did I do? What duty did I leave undone?”
 [43] Begin from the first and go through them all; and then,
 [44] if you have done base things, rebuke yourself; if good things, rejoice.
[19.1] Having come to this point of the discourse, gather together for me the sense of all the precepts, so that the tribunal within the soul, looking to them as to divine laws, may pass judgment on what has been done well or badly. For how will the reckoning afterward be able to reprove us when we have done base things, and praise us when we have done good ones, unless reasoning beforehand has received certain laws according to which we ought to order our life, and unless the treasury of conscience directs our whole life toward these, as toward a mark? He recommends that such a judgment be made every day, so that by the continuity of memory the unerring accuracy of the judgment may be preserved; and toward evening, when we are turning to sleep, so that at the close of the day's actions we may seat the tribunal of conscience, making the examination of our dispositions a bedtime hymn to God: "Where did I transgress? What did I do? What duty did I leave undone?" For thus we shall measure our own life against the rules handed down to us, joining the judging reason to the legislating intellect.
[19.2] What, then, does the legislator say? To honour the beings superior by nature, according to their essential rank. To make most account of parents and kinsfolk. To embrace and love good men. To rise above the bodily powers. To feel shame before oneself everywhere. To take care of justice. To know beforehand how perishable are wealth and this ephemeral life. To embrace the lot assigned by divine judgment. To have a spirit befitting God, and to change one's judgment for the better. To practise the love of words that are truly words. To be undeceivable and unenslaved in guarding virtue. To use good deliberation before deeds, from which freedom from regret in one's deeds arises. To be pure of conceit. To pursue the life of knowledge. To reshape the body and external things for the activity of virtue.
[19.3] These are the ordinances that the legislating intellect lays down for souls; and the reasoning that has received them becomes a sleepless judge of itself, often saying to itself, "Where did I transgress? What did I do? What duty did I leave undone?", and taking up its memory in order, for the sake of virtue. Then, if it finds that it has passed the day in accordance with the rules set before it, it crowns itself with the fruits of divine gladness; but if it catches itself having done something out of tune, it applies the admonitions of repentance to itself, as though they were astringent remedies. That is why he says that sleep must be repelled by the eagerness for this reckoning. And the body will hold out, not being dragged down by the need to sleep, because of the temperate regimen, through which even the necessary passions are ordered under the rule of reasoning. For he says: do not admit sleep "before you have reckoned over each deed of the day."
[19.4] And what is the reckoning? "Where did I transgress? What did I do? What duty did I leave undone?" For we err in two ways: either by doing what we ought not, which is indicated by "transgress"; or by not doing what we ought, as the very wording states. For idleness in the good is one thing and activity in the shameful another; and the one is blamed for omission, the other for admission. For example: we ought to pray, and ought not to blaspheme; we ought to support our parents, and ought not to insult them. He, then, who does not do the former does not do what he ought, and he who does the latter does what he ought not; though both, in a certain way, amount to the same transgression of the law.
[19.5] He bids us make the reckoning of the day's deeds in order from the first to the last, omitting none of those in between; this is what is meant by "go through them all". For transposition often misleads the judgment, and through the disorder of memory makes what was badly done easy to excuse. And besides, the recollection of our daily life becomes an exercise in the recalling of our former lives, and a consciousness of our immortality.
[19.6] And this is remarkable: having said "reckoned over each", he did not go on to add "What have I done rightly? Which of my duties have I performed?", but turned the memory toward what is freer from conceit, making the judgment bear on our faults; and he set as judge the most just and at the same time the most intimate judge — conscience itself and right reason, and each man himself to himself, whom we were taught before to feel shame before most of all. For who can admonish another as well as he can admonish himself? For self-determination, availing itself of the freedom of its nature, shakes off the counsels of others when it does not wish to obey; but reasoning that comes from within must of necessity listen to itself. This is the guardian God has set over us; this is our tutor and teacher. This the discourse now makes judge of the day's deeds, and awaits its verdict, so that it may itself vote itself worthy of approval or rebuke. For when it reads over its actions in memory, as in a register, it then judges, looking to the law as its pattern, and votes itself worthy of honour or dishonour. Such daily attentiveness makes the one who practises it a godlike statue, training him by additions and subtractions toward the beauty of virtue, and, so far as is possible, making him a good man. For it is in this that the discourse has culminated, being about to pass on to the deifying precepts.

### XX · Verses 45–48

[20.0] [45] Labour at these things, practise them; these you must love;
 [46] these will set you in the footsteps of divine virtue —
 [47] yes, by him who handed down to our soul the Tetraktys,
 [48] fount of ever-flowing nature.
[20.1] This is what we were saying in the Introduction too: that practical philosophy makes a man good through the acquisition of the virtues, while contemplative philosophy establishes him in likeness to God by the illumination of intellect and truth; and that, as regards us, the lesser must of necessity come before the greater. For it is easier to bring human life within measure by a well-reasoned use of things than to be wholly transformed in nature — which would come about through a complete turning back to contemplation.
[20.2] And besides, it is impossible to acquire the truth without disturbance unless our irrational powers have been ordered according to intellect by the moral virtues. For the rational soul, being intermediate between intellect and irrationality, can consort without distraction with the intellect prior to it only when, having become pure of its attachment to the things that come after it, it lays hold of those higher things purely. And it will be pure if it is in no way carried along with irrationality or with the mortal body, but takes care of them as one being takes care of another, different from itself, allotting them only so much attention as the divine law commands — the law which does not allow a man to try to lead himself out of life, but bids him wait until God himself releases us. Such a soul, then, will need a twofold virtue: civic virtue with regard to what is below, which sets the irrationality in order; and contemplative virtue with regard to what is above, which procures its communion with the superior beings.
[20.3] On the boundary between these two virtues the present verses are set: the one, "Labour at these things, practise them; these you must love," as the proper conclusion of civic virtue; the other, "these will set you in the footsteps of divine virtue," as the most beautiful beginning of contemplative science. For the man who has been freed from the bestial life and has purified himself, as far as he can, from the immoderation of the passions, and has for this reason become, as it were, a man instead of a beast — him the verses that follow promise to make a god instead of a man, so far as it is possible for a man to become a god. That this is the end of contemplative truth is made plain by the Verses themselves, in which, toward the end, the poet adds the most beautiful and loftiest conclusion:
[20.4] [70] And if, leaving the body behind, you come to the free aether,
 [71] you will be immortal, a god undying, no longer mortal.
[20.5] That we attain our restoration — which is the same as saying our deification — through virtue practised beforehand and through the truth known upon the basis of it, this sacred discourse declares, as we shall see a little later.
[20.6] But now let us return once more to the verses before us and consider whether the labour, the practice and the love, applied to the precepts already given, mean anything other than turning the whole soul to the exercise of virtue. For the soul, even taken by itself as rational, has in a certain way three powers: one by which we learn, which is now commanded to "practise" these things; another by which we hold fast what we have learned, which is enjoined to "labour at" them; and another by which we cherish what we have learned and hold fast, which is admonished to "love" them. So, in order that we may have all the powers of the rational soul bent together upon the precepts of the virtues, he requires practice of the power whose nature is to think, labour of the power that preserves what has been thought, and love of the power that loves the beautiful; so that from all of them together the possession of goods that are truly good may come to us, together with an unswerving preservation of them and an affection for them grown one with our nature. On these follows divine hope, bringing in the light of truth, as he himself promises when he says, "these will set you in the footsteps of divine virtue" — that is, these will make you like God through scientific knowledge of beings. For to reckon out the causes of beings, which reside primarily in the Demiurgic God, leads to the summit of the knowledge of God, and together with it enters likeness to God as well. This likeness the discourse calls divine virtue, as being rightly mounted upon the human virtue that precedes it. Let the first verses, then, find their completion in a love that is philosophic and loves the beautiful; and, with this love going before, let knowledge of the truth follow, leading up to likeness with divine virtue, as is shown in the verses that come next.
[20.7] The necessity of the connection between these is further confirmed by an oath. For that human virtue, rightly acquired, makes its way to the divine likeness is sworn with great earnestness by the very one who at the beginning enjoined, "revere the oath." For he commands us to abstain from swearing about contingent things, whose outcome is uncertain. Such things are both small and changeable; hence it is neither worthy nor safe to swear about them, for it is not in our power to bring them to completion. But about things that are present, necessarily connected and of the greatest moment, swearing is both safe and fitting. For neither could the changeableness of affairs ever trip us up — since the things about which the oath is now sworn are bound to one another by the ordinance of Adrasteia — nor does their lowliness and humbleness refuse the witness of the divine; for truth and virtue are the greatest things not only among men but also among the gods. Further, the oath becomes for him a doctrine: that one ought so to honour the teacher of truth as even to swear by him, if ever it be needed to confirm the doctrines; and not only to say of him, "He himself said it," but also, "these things are so, by him himself."
[20.8] At the same time, in swearing about the connection of the noblest states of soul, he speaks as a theologian, and declares the tetrad, the fount of the everlasting world-order, to be the same as the Demiurgic God. How is God the tetrad? You will find it clearly so in the Sacred Discourse attributed to Pythagoras, in which God is hymned as the Number of Numbers. For if all beings subsist by his everlasting acts of will, it is clear that the number in each form of beings also depends on their cause, and that the first number is somewhere there; for from there it comes here. Now the bounded interval of number is the decad. For whoever wishes to count further turns back again to one and two and three, and counts a second decad to make up twenty, and a third likewise so as to say thirty, and so on in order, until, having counted the tenth decad, he arrives at a hundred. And again he counts a hundred and ten in the same way. And so, with the interval of the decad coming round in a cycle, he can go on to infinity.
[20.9] The power of the decad is the tetrad. For before the perfection of the decad, which is unfolded, a unified perfection is seen in the tetrad. For when one adds from the monad up to the tetrad, the whole sum comes to the decad: one, two, three and four make up ten. And the tetrad is the arithmetic mean between the monad and the heptad; for it exceeds and is exceeded by an equal number, falling short of the heptad by three and surpassing the monad by three. Now the properties of the monad and the heptad are most beautiful and excellent. The monad, as the principle of all number, holds together in itself the powers of all numbers; the heptad, as virgin and without a mother, has the dignity of the monad in the second degree. For it is neither generated from any number within the decad — as four from twice two, six from twice three, eight from twice four, nine from three times three, and ten from twice five — nor does it generate any of those within the decad, as two generates four, three generates six and nine, and five generates ten. The tetrad, lying midway between the ungenerated monad and the motherless heptad, has taken in and holds together at once the powers of the generating and the generated numbers, being alone of the numbers within the decad both generated by a number and generating one: for the dyad, doubling itself, generates the tetrad, and the tetrad, taken twice, produces eight. The first appearance of the solid, too, is found in the tetrad. For the point is analogous to the monad and the line to the dyad, since it goes from something to something; the surface belongs to the triad, since the triangle is the most elementary of rectilinear figures; but the solid is proper to the tetrad. For the first pyramid is seen in the tetrad: a triangular base, the three, being laid down, and a vertex, the one, being set upon it. The judging powers among beings, too, are four: intellect, science, opinion and sense-perception; for all beings are judged either by intellect, or by science, or by opinion, or by sense-perception. And, in a word, the tetrad binds together all beings — the number of the elements, of the seasons of the year, of the ages of life, of the forms of community. And there is nothing one can name that does not depend on the Tetraktys as its root and principle. For, as we said, the tetrad is the Demiurge and cause of all things, the intelligible God, cause of the heavenly and sensible god.
[20.10] Knowledge of this was handed down to the Pythagoreans by Pythagoras himself, by whom the author of these Verses now swears that the perfecting of virtue will lead us up to the illumination of truth. So in this respect too one might say that "revere the oath" is kept specifically for the gods who are ever the same, whereas here the oath is sworn specifically by the teacher who handed down the Tetraktys to us — who was not one of the immortal gods, nor of the heroes by nature, but a man adorned with likeness to God and preserving the divine image for those who came after him. This is why he makes him the one sworn by in matters so great, covertly instilling in his hearers reverence for Pythagoras and showing his worth through the teachings he handed down. And the greatest of these is the knowledge of the demiurgic Tetraktys.
[20.11] But since the first things have been treated in brief, while the second lie in promise, with a firm and undeceiving hope; and since the hierophant of the Tetraktys has been identified, and what this Tetraktys is has been recalled so far as befits the present discussion — come, let us pass on to what the discourse invites us to proceed to, having first shown with what impulse and preparation, and with what cooperation of the superior beings, one ought to approach these things.

### XXI · Verses 48–49

[21.0] [48] But go to your work,
 [49] having prayed to the gods to bring it to completion.
[21.1] In few words the discourse has sketched everything that contributes to the possession of goods: the self-motion of the soul and the cooperation of God. For even if the choice of noble things is in our power, yet since we have this very power from God, we assuredly need his cooperation and his bringing to completion of what we have chosen. For our own endeavour is like a hand stretched out to receive noble things, while what God contributes is the supply and fount of the giving of goods; the one is naturally fitted to seek out noble things, the other to reveal them to him who seeks rightly; and prayer is the boundary between our seeking and God's giving, holding well to our cause, which both brings us forth into being and perfects us into well-being. For how could anyone receive the good if God did not give it? And how would God, whose nature is to give, give to one who is self-determining in his impulses and does not ask? So, in order that we may neither make our prayer in word alone but strengthen it also by deed, nor trust in our own activity alone but hold fast also to the cooperation that comes from God, and that we may join prayer to work as form to matter — and, to sum up the whole, that we may pray for what we work at and work at what we pray for — he joined the two together and said: "But go to your work, having prayed to the gods to bring it to completion." For we must neither merely be eager for noble things, as though it lay in our own power to act rightly in them even without God's cooperation, nor be content with the bare words of prayer while contributing nothing towards obtaining what we have asked. For in that way we shall practise either a godless virtue (if the expression may be allowed) or an inactive prayer; and of these the one, being godless, destroys the very essence of virtue, while the other, being idle, dissolves the efficacy of prayer. For how will anything be noble that is not done according to the divine rule? And how will what is done according to this rule not wholly need his cooperation in order to come into existence? For virtue is an image of God in the rational soul; and every image needs its paradigm in order to come into being, and it is not enough for the one who acquires it unless he also looks there, to that in likeness to which he is to acquire the noble. Those, then, who strive for active virtue ought to pray, and those who pray ought to work at acquiring it; and this was: to act looking towards the divine and radiant, and to bend ourselves towards philosophy, while holding well to the first cause of goods. For that fount of ever-flowing nature, the Tetraktys, is established as the eternal cause for all things not only of being but also of well-being, having spread its own good through the whole cosmos like a pure and intellective light. And the soul that holds well to it, having scoured itself clean like an eye to sharpen its sight, is roused to prayer by its care for noble things; and again, from the fulfilment it receives in prayer, it intensifies its effort, joining deeds to words and confirming earnest deeds by divine converse. And, finding some things and being illuminated with others, it pursues what it prays for, and prays for what it pursues. Such is the union of endeavour and prayer. What is rightly achieved through both of them, let us hear next.

### XXII · Verses 49–51

[22.0] [49] Having mastered these,
 [50] you will know the constitution of immortal gods and mortal men,
 [51] how each thing is distinguished and how it is held together;
[22.1] First he foretells that knowledge of God and theological science will be present to those who have been led in this way, and recognition of all the things that have come to subsist from the sacred Tetraktys, together with their distinction according to kind and their union into one cosmos. For here the word "constitution" signifies their ordering together; "how each thing is distinguished," their difference by species; and "how it is held together," their community by kind. For the kinds of rational beings, being distinct by nature, come together into one community in accordance with this very distinction. For by the fact that some are first, some middle and some last, they are at once distinguished and united. For neither could the first become middle or last, nor the middle first or last, nor the last middle or first; but they remain eternally distinguished by kind within the boundaries set by the Demiurge. And so we understand "how each thing is distinguished". "How each thing is held together" we shall consider in turn, as follows. This universe would not be perfect unless it possessed within itself first, middle and last parts, as beginning, middle and end of the whole system. Nor would the first be first unless middle and last followed them; nor would the middle be what they are called unless extremes lay on either side of them; nor again would the last be last unless first and middle went before them. They therefore bring one another in together for the perfection of the whole. And this was their being "held together" by one another: as different in form, they differ; as parts of one cosmos, they enter in together; and by the very fact of being at once separated and united, they complete the whole constitution and co-ordination of the divine world-order — which, he says, you will know if you become master of the goods spoken of before.
[22.2] With the mention of the extreme kinds the middle ones come in as well; for he says, "the constitution of immortal gods and mortal men". The first are joined to the last through the middle, and the last are drawn up to the first through the mediation of the good heroes. Such, too, is the order of the rational kinds handed down in the Introduction: first in this cosmos are the immortal gods, next the illustrious heroes, and last the terrestrial daemons, whom he here calls mortal men. How each of these should be understood has already been said in the Introduction; but to gain in addition a scientific knowledge of those whose honour we received beforehand from tradition — this comes about for those who adorn practical virtue with contemplative truth, or who are being transferred from the good condition of a human being to divine virtue. For to know beings in this way, as they were made to subsist by God himself, was to acquire a divine likeness. And since after the incorporeal world-order there lies corporeal nature, which fills out this visible cosmos and is co-ordinated under the governance of the rational beings, he next indicates that the good of natural science will follow for those who advance in due order to the kinds of knowledge.

### XXIII · Verses 52–53

[23.0] [52] you will know, as is right, that nature is in all things alike,
 [53] so that you will neither hope for what is not to be hoped, nor will anything escape you.
[23.1] Nature, moulding the visible cosmos after the divine due measure, has made it everywhere like itself through analogy, in different ways, and has imaged the divine beauty throughout all the forms within the cosmos, now in one way, now in another: so as to give to heaven perpetual motion and to earth stability, each of these carrying away a trace of the divine likeness. And to the heavenly body it allotted the circumference of the universe, to the body about the earth the centre. In a sphere the centre is a principle in one way, and the bound of the containing surface in another. Hence the regions above are adorned with stars and with the intellective living beings that come after them, while the earth has been adorned with plants and with animals that use sensation alone. Between things so far apart man is seen as the mean, a kind of amphibious creature, the last of the beings above and the first of those below. Therefore at one time he associates with the immortals and, by his turning back to intellect, recovers his proper lot; at another he herds with the mortal kinds and, by transgressing the divine laws, falls from the dignity that belongs to him. For as the last of the rational kinds he is not so made as to think always and in the same way — for then he would not be man but god by nature — nor is he able to think always, even if not in the same way — for that would place him in the order of the angels. As it is, he is man, able to be led up to the better by likeness, but by nature inferior to the immortal gods and the illustrious heroes, as to the first and middle kinds within the cosmos. For just as he falls below these by not always thinking, but coming at times to be in ignorance and forgetfulness of his own essence and of the illumination that descends into him from God, so by not remaining always in ignorance he surpasses the irrational animals and plants, and rises in essence above the whole earthly and mortal nature, since he is naturally able to turn back towards God, to efface his forgetfulness by recollection, to recover by instruction what he has lost, and to heal the flight from above by the reverse flight.
[23.2] It befits human nature, then, being such, to know the constitution of the immortal gods and mortal men, that is, the ordering of the rational kinds; and to know also nature, alike in all things, that is, corporeal being, which from above down to the lowest things has been adorned through analogy and divine reflection; and to know all these things "as is right," that is, as they are disposed by law, as they were made to subsist by God, and in what way they have been ordered by his laws, whether bodies or incorporeals. For "as is right" must be understood as applying in common to both works of making. For we must not, yielding to thoughtless impulses, transfer the worth of things to suit our own opinion; but, following the boundaries of truth, we must know all beings as is right, and as the ordinance of the creation has defined each.
[23.3] From these two kinds of knowledge — that concerning God's incorporeal work of making and that concerning his corporeal — there blossoms a most beautiful corollary: "neither to hope for what is not to be hoped, nor to have anything escape you." For it is from the essence of things escaping our notice that hoping for what is not to be hoped, and conceiving impossibilities, arise. For instance, if someone who is a man hopes to become one of the immortal gods or of the illustrious heroes, he does not know the boundaries of nature and has not distinguished the first, middle and last among beings. And again, if someone thinks that his own soul dies along with the mortal body, through ignorance of the immortality that belongs to our soul, he expects what he ought not, and what cannot come to pass. Likewise, the one who hopes to put on the body of a beast and become an irrational animal through vice, or even a plant through sluggishness of perception — he too, in the opposite way to those who change the essence of man into the higher kinds, thrusts it down to the lower, being in error and not understanding the unchangeableness of the form that belongs essentially to the human soul. For, remaining always man, it is said to become god or beast according as it acquires virtue or vice in turn; but by nature it is neither, only by a relation of likeness to the one or the other. And in general, he who does not know the worth belonging to each being, but either exceeds it or falls short of it, makes this ignorance the starting-point of empty opinion and of hope for what is not to be hoped. But he who defines each thing within the measures set by the Demiurge, and knows beings as they came to be, and measures his own knowledge by God — he most of all keeps the precept "Follow God," knows that "Measure is best," and attains the hope that cannot be deceived.

### XXIV · Verses 54–60

[24.0] [54] You will know men whose sufferings are self-chosen,
 [55] wretched, who, though good things are near, neither see
 [56] nor hear them; and few understand the release from evils.
 [57] Such is the lot that harms the minds of mortals: like cylinders
 [58] they roll now here, now there, suffering endless woes.
 [59] For baneful Strife, their inborn companion, harms them unnoticed;
 [60] one must not provoke it, but yield and flee.
[24.1] Once the ordering of the incorporeal and corporeal kinds has been rightly understood, it follows that the essence of man too is known exactly: what it is, and to what affections it is subject; and that it stands on the boundary between the beings that never fall into vice and those that are not by nature capable of being raised up to virtue. For this reason it inclines both ways in its relations, at one time living there the intellective life of well-being, at another taking on here the passibility of sense. Hence Heraclitus rightly says that we live their death, and die their life. For man comes down and falls away from the happy region, as Empedocles the Pythagorean says,

an exile from God and a wanderer, trusting in raging Strife.

But he goes up again and recovers his ancient state, if he flees the things about the earth and "the joyless place", as the same poet says,

where are Murder and Wrath and the tribes of other Dooms;

and those who fall into it

wander in darkness over the meadow of Ruin.

The longing of one who flees the meadow of Ruin presses on toward the meadow of Truth: the meadow he left when, in the rush of shedding his wings, he came into an earthly body, "bereft of a blessed life".
[24.2] With this Plato too agrees. Of the descent he says: "When, being unable to follow, it fails to see, and meeting with some mischance, sheds its wings and falls to the earth, then the law is that it be settled in a mortal animal." And of the ascent he says this: that when a man has mastered by reason the tumultuous and irrational mob of earth and water and air and fire which grew onto him later, he arrives at the form of his former and best state; and then he is also led up to his consort star, having become sound and whole. Sound, by release from the passions, as from so many diseases, which comes about through civic virtue; whole, by the recovery of intellect and knowledge, as of his own proper parts, which is naturally achieved rightly through contemplative truth. And again he shows plainly how, by flight from this world, we must heal the estrangement from the superior beings that has come about, when he defines philosophy as flight from the evils here. For in these words he declares that the passions are congenital to mortals alone: "But it is not possible for evils to perish, nor to be among the gods; they haunt this region and mortal nature of necessity." For to things subject to generation and corruption it belongs, surely, to be capable also of being put into a state contrary to nature; and this is the principle of evils. How one must flee them he adds: "Therefore one must flee from here to there; and flight is likeness to God, so far as is possible for a human being; and likeness is to become just and holy with practical wisdom."
[24.3] For he who wishes to escape evils must first turn away from mortal nature; for those who are mingled with it cannot avoid being filled, of necessity, with the evils that follow it as well. As, then, our flight from God and the loss of the wings that lifted us upward brought us down into the region of mortals, where evils come in along with them, so the casting off of mortal attachment and the growing of the virtues, like wings, will lead us up to the region pure of evils, to divine well-being. For the essence of man, holding the middle place between the beings that always think God and those that are by nature incapable of ever thinking, goes up to the former and down to the latter; by acquiring or losing intellect it presses by turns toward likeness to God or toward likeness to the beast, because of the amphibious character of its nature.
[24.4] He, then, who has come to know these things about human essence knows how men have self-chosen sufferings, and how they become wretched and miserable by their own choice. For at one time, though still able to remain there, they are dragged down into generation by the rashness of their impulse; at another, though able to be quickly released from here, they entangle themselves in the excesses of the passions. And this is what was meant by neither seeing nor hearing the good things that are near. "Good things" here are virtue and truth; not seeing that they are near is not being stirred up of oneself to the discovery of what is noble; and not hearing is not giving heed to the teachings of others. For there are two ways of acquiring knowledge: by learning, as through hearing, or by discovery, as through sight. Those, then, are said to have self-chosen sufferings who will neither learn from others nor find out by themselves, having no share in the awareness of goods, and being for this reason wholly useless. For

he who neither thinks for himself, nor lays to heart what another says, he in turn is a useless man. [Hesiod, Works and Days 296–297]

But those who have made it their work to learn and to discover about goods, these are they who understand the release from evils, and who by flight from the toils here are resettled in the free aether. But such men are few. For most are bad, overcome by mortal attachment, and harmed in mind by their inclination toward the earth; so that this evil too they have from themselves, because they chose to flee from God and to cut themselves off from his company, in which they were happy while they lived in pure light. For it is the separation from God that "the lot that harms the minds" here signifies. It is impossible either that one who has become bereft of God should not be senseless, or that one who has fallen into senselessness should not be bereft of God. For the senseless man is necessarily godless, and the godless man senseless.
[24.5] Both, then, since they have not been awakened to the love of noble things, have endless woes, carried like cylinders by their downward-tending actions now into one evil, now into another, and not knowing what to do with themselves, because they meet every turn of fortune without education: now insolent in wealth, now doing mischief in poverty; driven to robbery by strength of body, to blasphemy by weakness and sickness; lamenting if they are childless, and making a large family an occasion for wars and for base gain. To say all in a word, there is nothing in life that does not become an occasion of evil to the senseless, hemmed in on every side as they are by self-chosen vice, and by their refusal to look up to the divine light or to give ear to what is truly good; sunk in mortal attachment, they are tossed about in life as in a stormy sea. Of these evils the one release is the turning back to God. It is found by those who awaken the eye and the ear of the soul to the recovery of goods, and who heal, by the uplifting power, the evil that attends our essence.
[24.6] Now the evil that is at once congenital to us and acquired is the movement of our self-determination contrary to nature, by which we attempt to contend with the divine laws and oppose them, not even perceiving how much we harm ourselves by seeming to resist God, but seeing blindly only this, that we have been able to throw off the rein of his ordinances. And this is what it is to use one's self-determination largely and without measure: to dare to stand apart from God and to take up the baneful strife against him, in which we contend, in a manner, and quarrel with him: when he says, "Do not do this," wanting above all to do that very thing; and again, if he says, "Do this," not doing that very thing; so that those who transgress the divine law fill themselves with misery on both sides, by not doing what is commanded and by doing what is forbidden.
[24.7] What remedy, then, shall we find against this baneful strife, which is called at once "companion" and "inborn", which is roused from what is in our power when it has been disposed contrary to nature, and which for that reason, as an evil of our own, harms us unawares? What must we set against it? What cure is to be found for raging Strife? What barrier against the power that drags us down, other than to labour at these things, to practise them and to love them, the things that "will set us in the footsteps of divine virtue"? For these were the release from evils which the few understand; these the hearing and sight of the good things that are near; these the deliverance from self-chosen sufferings; these the cutting short of the boundlessness of the passions. These, then, would be the escape from godless strife and the salvation of the soul, the purging away of raging Strife and the recall from our exile from God. For we can heal the downward inclination by the uplifting power only if we do not push it further, nor add evils to evils, but, becoming obedient to right reason, flee the baneful strife by the good strife: no longer striving to disobey God, but striving to obey him with all our strength. And this ought not even to be called strife, but obedience persuaded by God, a turning back toward the divine law, and a willing submission, which cuts away the occasions of senseless disobedience.
[24.8] All these things, I think, are made plain in the verses before us. Self-determined wickedness is shown through "You will know men whose sufferings are self-chosen", men who must be called "wretched" and miserable, because they have been drawn into vice of their own choice. That they are in no way willing to give ear to what is noble is shown by the words "who, though good things are near, neither see nor hear them". And that it is possible to be released from self-chosen evils is shown by "and few understand the release from evils", which has been set in between so as to show that the release lies among the things in our power, and to make known that the bond hangs upon what is voluntary. Then he adds the cause of the blindness and deafness of the souls that have fallen into vice: "Such is the lot that harms the minds of mortals." For separation from the superior beings leads to senselessness and a choice made without deliberation; this separation he hinted at by the baneful lot which, through our inclination toward the partial and mortal living being, puts us outside the divine chorus. He shows, besides, the consequences of this lack of deliberation, and teaches how faults are at once voluntary and involuntary, by saying that the life of the senseless resembles the motion of a cylinder on a plane, which then moves at once in a circle and in a straight line: in a circle of itself, and in a straight line because of its fall. For as the cylinder, once tilted from the upright, no longer keeps control of its circular revolution about its axis, so the soul too fails to attain the true goods once it has fallen away from right reason and from its conjunction with God; it wanders about apparent goods and is carried off the straight course, rolled about by its attachments to sense. This he expressed by "they roll now here, now there, suffering endless woes."
[24.9] Since the cause of the lot that harms the mind, and of the separation from divine things, was the movement of self-determination disposed contrary to nature, he taught in the next two lines how this movement too must be lulled to rest and turned back toward God: he pointed out the self-determined harm thus, "For baneful Strife, their inborn companion, harms them unnoticed", and the self-determined cure, "one must not provoke it, but yield and flee." And perceiving that, before all else, we need help from God both to escape evils and to recover goods, he added, as a kind of prayer and a request for aid, the turning back toward Zeus.

### XXV · Verses 61–66

[25.0] [61] Father Zeus, surely you would free all men from many evils,
 [62] if you showed to all what daemon they make use of.
 [63] But take courage, for mortals are of divine race,
 [64] to whom sacred Nature, bringing all things forth, reveals each one.
 [65] If you have any share in these, you will master what I command you,
 [66] and, healing your soul, you will save it from these toils.
[25.1] It was the custom of the Pythagoreans to honour the maker and father of this universe with the name of Zeus, in its forms Dia and Zēn. For it is right that he through whom (di' hon) being and living (zēn) belong to all things should be named from his activity. For the truly proper name of God is the one that best befits his activities and his works; whereas among us the names that seem proper are assigned by chance and by choice rather than found out through kinship with the essence, as can be seen in many names given inappropriately to certain people: as if a man of wicked character were called Agathon ("Good"), or a man godless in mind Eusebius ("Pious"). Such names have no share in the correctness of names, because they present nothing of the essence or of the activity of the things to which they are given. The true correctness of names, then, must be sought among eternal things; among the eternal, in the divine; and among the divine, in the most excellent. Hence the name of Zeus too is a symbol and image in sound of the demiurgic essence, because those who first gave names to things, through their surpassing wisdom, like excellent sculptors, displayed the powers of things through names as through images. For they made the names in the voice symbols of the thoughts in the soul, and made the thoughts themselves cognitive images of the things thought. Filled with contemplation by turning back toward the intelligibles, and becoming pregnant from there with intellective birth-pangs, they then went forth into speech and gave to beings such names as, by their very sound and by the letters taken up to pronounce them, stamped out, so far as was possible, the forms of the things named, and led those who rightly understood the names back to the essences themselves; so that the end of their contemplation becomes for us a beginning for the discovery of the thought of things. In this way, then, the Demiurge has been named by them, of old the Tetraktys, and now Father Zeus, for the reasons we have given.
[25.2] What the words of the present prayer ask of him he has already spread out before all through his goodness; but it rests with us to receive what he is always giving. For in the earlier verses too it was said,

go to your work, having prayed to the gods,

since the gods always give good things, and we receive them only when we stretch ourselves out toward the divine giving; for what is self-determining would not receive the true goods unless it willed to receive them. And these are truth and virtue, which shine forth from the demiurgic cause always and in the same way upon all. And now the discourse requires, as necessary for the release from evils, that we see our own essence; for this is what "what daemon they make use of" meant, that is, "what kind of soul". And he determines that upon such a turning back toward ourselves there necessarily follow both the escape from evils and the manifestation of what God holds out to us for happiness. The argument, then, proceeds from a hypothesis: that if all were to see what they are, and what daemon they make use of, all would be released from evils. But this is impossible. For it cannot be that all together should philosophise, and receive the goods that God always offers for the perfection of well-being. What, then, remains but for those only to take courage who apply themselves to the science that reveals the goods proper to us? For these alone will be released from the evils fastened upon mortal nature, since they alone have turned back toward the contemplation of the true goods; and these it is fitting to enrol in the divine race, as having been taught by sacred Nature, that is, by philosophy, and trained in their duties. Whether we have any share in the fellowship of divine men we shall show by holding fast to earnest works and to scientific knowledge; by these alone is the soul of man healed and freed from the toils here, as it is transferred to its divine lot.
[25.3] In short, then, the sense of the verses before us is this: those who have come to know themselves are released from mortal passibility. Why, then, are not all released, since all have within them innate starting-points for the knowledge of their own essence? Because most, as I said, are men whose sufferings are self-chosen, who, though good things are near, neither see nor hear them. Few are those who understand the release from evils through knowing what daemon they make use of; and these are the men who are purified by philosophy of the passions of irrationality, and are set free from the places here as from prisons.
[25.4] Why, then, does he say to Zeus, "surely you would free all men from many evils, if you showed to all what daemon they make use of"? Is it as though it lay with him to turn all men to the truth even against their will, but through neglect or malice he does not do it, so that they may be held in their bonds? Surely it is not even holy to think so. Rather, the passage teaches this: that whoever presses on toward well-being must turn back to God as to his father. For God is the Demiurge of all things, but of the good he is also the father. So the man who understands the release from evils, who is being freed from self-chosen sufferings, and who cuts off baneful Strife by voluntary flight, turns back toward the everlasting help that comes down from God and cries out, "Father Zeus", calling God father because he has already performed beforehand the part of a son; and he reflects that if what is happening in his own case were to happen for all, all would be released from evils just as he is. Then, finding that this does not come to pass — not because of God, but because of the majority, whose sufferings are self-chosen — he says to himself, "But take courage", as one who has found the way of release from evils. And this way was the turning back, through sacred philosophy, toward the things shown by God, which the many do not see, because they do not rightly use the common notions which the Demiurge implanted in the rational race for the knowledge of himself.
[25.5] Since, then, to show anything to anyone implies the activities of two persons converging on the same point (for how could you show something to a blind man, even if you held out to him ten thousand times what you wish to show? or how could you show anything to one who sees, if you held nothing out?), both must be present: the good held out by the one who shows, and the discerning eye of the one to whom it is shown; so that the visible on the one side and the sight on the other may converge to complete the showing. This being so, let us take as a hypothesis that all would be released from evils together, if the Demiurge showed to all and made manifest to them the knowledge of their own essence, and what daemon they make use of. But in fact not all are released from evils together. Therefore he does not show to all, but only to those who of their own accord have set out toward release from evils, and have lifted up their own eye to behold and receive what is shown. Therefore he himself is not the cause of his not showing to all; the cause is those who, though good things are near, neither see nor hear, and who for this reason are said to have self-chosen sufferings. The fault, then, is his who chooses; God is blameless of evils. He always lets goods shine forth upon all, so far as lies in him, yet he does not always show them to all, because in most men the contemplative eye for the goods held out to them is closed, and bends downward, taken up with worse things.
[25.6] Such an interpretation of the verses before us agrees both with the truth itself and with the sense of the verses above. For if it lies with God to draw men to the truth even against their will, why do we charge them with having self-chosen sufferings? Why do we advise that one must not provoke Strife, but yield and flee? Or why do we enjoin men to bear gently what befalls them and to strive to heal it? For the road to virtue through learning is altogether closed to those who abolish what is in our power. There would be no need to labour, nor to make noble things our study and our love, if it were God's own task to save us from vice and to fill us with the virtues while we contributed nothing of our own. But in that case the cause of the wickedness of the many would be a charge against God. If, however, God is not the cause of evils, as indeed he is both said and is, it is clear that our falling away from goods is our own doing, since, though they are near and lie within us in our natural notions, we neither see nor hear them. And the cause of this blindness and deafness is baneful Strife, a self-chosen harm, which one must not push further, but yield and flee from it, understand the release from evils, and find the turning back to God. For in this way the illumination from God, when our sight runs to meet it, becomes a showing. And the works of this showing are the healing of the soul, its salvation from the toils here, the awareness of divine goods, and fellowship in the Father's commonwealth.
[25.7] Having said this much beforehand about virtue and truth, having completed the precepts of virtue with the nightly review, and having carried the hopes of truth as far as the healing and salvation of the soul, he next adds what concerns the wing-giving purity of the luminous body, attaching a third kind of philosophy to what has been said.

### XXVI · Verses 67–69

[26.0] [67] But abstain from the foods we spoke of, in the purifications
 [68] and in the release of the soul, judging each thing; and consider all,
 [69] setting above you, as charioteer, the best judgment.
[26.1] The rational being came into existence from the Demiurge having a connate body, in such a way that it is neither itself body nor yet without body: it is itself incorporeal, but its whole form is bounded and completed in a body. So it is with the stars: their upper part is incorporeal being and their lower part corporeal; and the sun is the whole made up of the incorporeal and of body — not of two things that were at one time apart and then came together (for then they might also come apart again), but of things created together at once and grown together in an order, so that the one leads and the other follows. So it is also with the rational kinds that come next, the heroic and the human: each hero is a rational soul with a body of light, and man likewise is a rational soul with a connate immortal body. This was the doctrine of the Pythagoreans, which Plato afterwards made plain when he likened every soul, divine and human, to the combined power of a winged team and a charioteer.
[26.2] For the perfection of the soul, then, we need truth and virtue; and for the purification of our luminous body we need the putting off of material defilements, the reception of the sacred purifications, and the strength that joins us to God and rouses us to our upward flight from here. These are what the present verses teach. They cut away the superfluous defilements of matter by the words "abstain from the foods we spoke of"; they instil the sacred purification and the strength that joins us to God by what they convey in veiled terms when they say "in the purifications and in the release of the soul, judging"; and they have rendered to us, complete and entire, the whole form of the human being by what they add: "setting above you, as charioteer, the best judgment". For this sets before us the whole essence of man and distinguishes the order of the parts within it: the judging part as the one that drives, and the following part as the one that is driven.
[26.3] For anyone not unacquainted with the Pythagorean symbols can learn from the present verses that, along with the practice of virtue and the recovery of truth, we must also take care of purity in regard to our luminous body, which the Oracles call the "subtle vehicle of the soul". This purification extends even to food and drink and to the whole regimen of our mortal body, in which the luminous body is lodged, breathing life into the soulless body and holding its harmony together. For the immaterial body is a kind of life, and generative of material life, through which our mortal living being is completed — a being composed of irrational life and the material body, and a phantom of the man, who consists of rational being and an immaterial body.
[26.4] Since, then, we are the man, and the man is what he is by reason of these two, we ought to be purified and perfected in them all, but to observe the manner appropriate to each nature; for each thing has its own purification. Thus, of the rational soul, the purification in respect of its rational part is scientific truth, and in respect of its opinative part deliberative virtue. For since we are by nature fitted to contemplate the things above and to order the things below, we shall need truth for the former and civic virtue for the latter, so that we may become contemplators of what is eternal and doers of what is contingent. And by abiding in both respects within the divine limits, we should escape the storm of irrationality. For it is from irrationality that our rational being must be purified, since in its inclination toward generation it attached itself to this as well. But further, a body which is mortal has grown onto our luminous body: this too must be purified, and freed from its sympathy with that mortal body.
[26.5] There remains, then, the purification of the psychic body, which must be performed by following the sacred ordinances and the arts of the sacred rites. This purification is in a way more corporeal; that is why it also lays hold of materials of every kind, tending this vital body in every way and actively persuading it to separate from matter and to fly up to the aethereal region, where its first happiness lay in having its station. And everything performed with this in view, if it is done in a manner worthy of the gods and not in the manner of charlatans, is found to accord with the rules of virtue and truth. For the purifications of the rational soul take thought also for the luminous vehicle, so that this too, growing wings along with them, may not stand in the way of the upward journey. Its best growth of wings is the gradual practice of withdrawal from earthly things, habituation to immateriality, and the putting off of whatever defilements it has been filled with through its yoking with the material body. For through these it is in some manner revived, gathers itself together, is filled with divine vigour, and is joined to the intellective perfection of the soul.
[26.6] How, then, might abstinence from certain foods contribute to these ends? For those who are accustoming themselves to be separated from all mortal things, to abstain wholly, here and now, from some of them — above all from those that gladden the heart and draw the mortal body down toward generation — would be a step on the road to purification. That is why abstinence from certain things was also enjoined in the symbolic precepts: its primary meaning is greater and more universal, but in consequence it also keeps us from the particular thing it names on each occasion. For example: "Do not eat the womb of an animal." Taken as it is spoken, this withdraws us from one single earthly thing, and that the smallest. But if you look into the manifold meaning of the Pythagorean depth, you will be taught, through a single example, abstinence from the whole of generation; and as we shall not take this thing among our foods, so in the purifications of the luminous body we shall practise what is understood from it. Likewise "Do not eat the heart" says primarily that one should not enter into the state of anger, but in consequence it also recommends abstinence from this part of the animal. On the same principle we shall regard "Abstain from carrion" as keeping us, as a whole, from mortal nature, and further also from partaking of flesh that has not been sacrificed and is unhallowed. For it is right to keep both the outward sense of the symbolic admonitions and the meaning understood within; for it is through constant observance of the outward sense that right action in the greater things is practised.
[26.7] So now too we shall hear the verse as giving us, in the briefest words, the beginnings of the greatest works. "Abstain," it says, "from foods" — which is the same as "keep away from perishable bodies". But since it is not possible at present to abstain from all, it adds "which we spoke of". And it points out where these were spoken of: "in the purifications and in the release of the soul", so that abstinence from foods may take such care of the translucency of the bodily vehicle as befits a soul that is being purified and released from the grip of matter. Over such practice it set the judging reason, which is able to bring the care of the luminous body into harmony with the purity of the soul. That is why it called this the "charioteer judgment", as being by nature set over the good order of the vehicle: "judgment", because it was a power of the rational soul; "charioteer", because it lays hold of the body and governs it. But the seeing eye is ranked above the charioteer. For though the soul is one, yet with the eye, as it were, it contemplates the plain of truth, while with the power analogous to a hand it holds the connate body and turns it back toward itself, so that as a whole it may look toward the divine and acquire the divine likeness.
[26.8] Such, then, is the general pattern of abstinence, aiming at goods so many and so great. The particulars were handed down in secret in the sacred sayings. Each of these, it is true, enjoined a particular abstinence — for instance, from beans among seeds, from carcasses among animals, and among these by kind, as among fishes to abstain from the erythrinus, and among land animals from another, and from yet another among birds; and finally it forbade certain parts of animals, as not to eat the head nor the heart. Yet in each of these the teaching impressed the perfection of purification: while assigning this or that to bodily abstinence on account of certain natural properties, through each it introduced purification from mortal attachment, and accustomed the man, through all of them, to turn back toward himself, to rise up out of the region of generation and corruption, and to migrate to the Elysian plain and the free aether.
[26.9] And since they made the advance in abstinence in due order, symbols are found among them that are, as one might suppose, in conflict. For "Abstain from animals" is contrary to "Abstain from the heart" — unless perhaps one says that "Abstain from the heart" was enjoined on beginners, and "from animals" on those already perfect; for partial abstinence is superfluous for those to whom the whole animal was forbidden. Therefore we must pay more than passing attention to the order of ascent which the verses indicate. For it says, "Abstain from foods"; then, as if someone asked "Which?", it answered, "those we spoke of". And again, as if to a second question asking where the Pythagoreans spoke of these, and in what traditions of their teachings they set forth abstinences from foods, it added, "in the purifications and in the release of the soul" — the purifications coming first and the release following. Now the purifications of the rational soul are the mathematical sciences, and its uplifting release is the dialectical epoptic vision of beings. That is why "in the release of the soul" is expressed in the singular: because this release culminates in one science, whereas mathematics embraces a multitude of sciences.
[26.10] To what has been properly received for the purification and release of the soul, then, we must also add what corresponds to them for the luminous body. Accordingly, the telestic purifications must accompany the mathematical, and the hieratic uplifting must follow the dialectical release. For these, which properly purify and perfect the pneumatic vehicle of the rational soul, separate it from material lifelessness and prepare it to be fit for communion with pure pneumatic bodies. "For it is not lawful for the impure to touch the pure." [Plato, Phaedo 67b] Just as, then, it is fitting to adorn the soul with knowledge and virtue, so that it may be able to be with those who are always such, so too the luminous body must be made pure and immaterial, so that it may bear fellowship with the aethereal bodies. For all things are wont to be joined to one another through likeness, while through unlikeness even things near in place are separated.
[26.11] This is the measure of the most perfect philosophy that the Pythagoreans handed down, proper and proportioned to the perfection of the whole man. For he who takes care of the soul alone and neglects the body does not purify the whole man. And again, he who thinks he should care for the body apart from the soul, or that treatments of the body will contribute something to a soul that is not purified by its own means, commits the same error. But he who proceeds properly by both is perfected as a whole. And in this respect philosophy is joined to the art of sacred rites, as the art concerned with the purification of the luminous body; and if this art is separated from the philosophic intellect, you will find that it no longer has the same power. For of the things that complete our perfection, some the philosophic intellect first discovered, and others the telestic activity introduced along with it, following the philosophic intellect. By telestic activity I mean the power that purifies the luminous body; so that, of philosophy as a whole, the contemplative part leads, as intellect, and the practical follows, as power. And of the practical let us posit two kinds, the civic and the telestic: the one cleansing us of irrationality by means of the virtues, the other cutting away material imaginings by means of the sacred methods. No small example of civic philosophy is the laws laid down in common, and of telestic philosophy, the sacred rites of cities.
[26.12] The summit of the whole of philosophy is the contemplative intellect; the middle is the civic; and the third is the telestic. The first holds toward the other two the place of the eye, while those after it hold, toward it, the rank of hand and foot; and all three are so linked with one another that any one of them is imperfect and almost useless without the cooperation of the others. Therefore there must come together into one union the science that discovers truth, the power that brings forth virtue, and the power that produces purity, so that the civic work may be accomplished in harmony with the leading intellect, and the sacred work may be shown to be in agreement with both.
[26.13] This is the goal of the Pythagorean discipline: that we become wholly and entirely winged for the participation of the divine goods, so that, when the hour of death arrives, the athletes of the contests of philosophy, leaving the mortal body on earth and stripping off its nature, may be unencumbered for the heavenly journey. For then, as the teaching declares in the verses that follow, their ancient station is restored to them and they are deified, so far as it is possible for men to become gods.

### XXVII · Verses 70–71

[27.0] [70] And if, leaving the body behind, you come to the free aether,
 [71] you will be immortal, a god undying, no longer mortal.
[27.1] This is the fairest end of our labours. This, as Plato says, is the great contest and the great hope. This is the most perfect fruit of philosophy; this is the greatest work of the hieratic and telestic art: to bring men into kinship with the truly beautiful and lead them up to it; to release them from the labours here, as from a subterranean cave of material life; to lead them up to the aethereal radiance; and to settle in the Isles of the Blessed those who have journeyed by the ways already described. For to them is reserved also the prize of deification, since it is not lawful for any to come into the race of the gods except one who has acquired truth and virtue in the soul and purity in its pneumatic vehicle. For thus, having become sound and whole, he is restored to the form of his ancient state, having recovered himself through union with right reason, having recognised the whole divine cosmos, and having discovered, so far as is possible for a human being, the Demiurge of this universe. And having become, so far as may be after the purification, what those beings always are who are not by nature apt to fall into generation, he is united by his knowledge with the universe and is led up to God himself. But since he has a connate body, he needs a place in which to be assigned a star-like station, seeking, as it were, a position. The fitting place for such a body would be the region immediately beneath the moon, as being above perishable bodies but below the heavenly ones; and this the Pythagoreans call the "free aether" — "aether", as being an immaterial and everlasting body; "free", as being pure of material affections.
[27.2] What, then, will he be who arrives there? What else but what the verse says: "you will be an immortal god" — made like the immortal gods spoken of at the beginning of the verses, not an immortal god by nature. For how could that which from some point in time has made progress and advanced to virtue and deification ever be placed on the same footing as those who are such from eternity? The addition makes this clear: to "you will be an immortal god" it added "undying, no longer mortal", so that our deification may be understood as the removal of what is perishable and mortal, since it does not belong to us by nature or by essence, but comes to us through progress and advancement. So this is another kind of gods, who become immortal by ascent and mortal by descent, and who are necessarily inferior even to the good heroes, since the heroes always think God, while these sometimes fall even into ignorance of him. For the third kind, when perfected, would not become superior to the middle kind, or equal to the first; rather, remaining third, it is made like the first kind while subordinate to the middle. For the likeness to the heavenly beings that is brought about in men by relation already pre-exists, more perfectly and more connaturally, in the heroic and middle kinds. And so the one perfection common to all the rational kinds is seen to be likeness to God the Demiurge. This belongs always and invariably to the heavenly beings; always, but not invariably, to the abiding aethereal beings; and neither always nor invariably to the aethereal beings that fall and are by nature apt to live as citizens on earth. If one should make the first and best likeness to God the pattern of the second and third assimilation, or the second the pattern of the third, one would speak rightly. For our aim is not only to be made like God the Demiurge, but also to be made like the best or the middle likeness, as to a rule. And if, falling short of these, we attain such likeness as we are able to attain, we possess this very thing that is according to nature, and in it we reap the perfection of virtue: in neither being ignorant of the measure of our being nor chafing at it. And the highest virtue is to keep within the limits of the demiurgic order, by which all things are distinguished according to their kinds, and to follow the laws of providence, by which all things, according to their proper power, are brought into kinship with the good that is proportioned to them.

### Epilogue

[28.0] Such is the exposition of the Golden Verses that we have made, containing a moderate summary of the Pythagorean doctrines. For we ought neither to confine our account within the brevity of the verses (for then much that is well laid down in them would have gone unnoticed), nor to stretch it to the length of the whole of philosophy (for that would be more than the present discourse admits), but to proportion the measure of our words, as far as possible, to their meaning, unfolding in them only so much of the general doctrines as suited the exposition of the verses. For these verses are nothing other than the most perfect stamp of philosophy, an epitome of its principal doctrines, and an elementary instruction written out by those who had already ascended the divine path for those who came after them. One might truly call them the fairest token of human nobility — not the record of any single Pythagorean, but the common utterance of the whole sacred company and, as they themselves would say, of the entire fellowship of hearers.
[28.1] That is why it was their law, every morning on rising and every evening when about to turn to sleep, to listen to these verses as to Pythagorean ordinances, one of them reading them aloud, so that by continual practice of such words they might make the doctrines living in themselves. This we too ought to do, that we may at last, late though it be, gain a perception of the benefit that comes from them.