29. Now, since it is so,
cease, I pray you, cease to rate trifling and unimportant things at
immense values. Cease to place man in the upper ranks, since he
is of the lowest; and in the highest orders, seeing that his person
only is taken account of,
3592
that he is needy, poverty-stricken in
his house and dwelling,
3593
and
was
never entitled to be
declared of illustrious descent. For while, as just men and
upholders of righteousness, you should have subdued pride and
arrogance, by the evils
3594
of which we are all uplifted and puffed
up with empty vanity; you not only hold that these evils arise
naturally, but—and this is much worse—you have also added
causes by which vice should increase, and wickedness remain
incorrigible. For what man is there, although of a disposition
which ever shuns what is of bad repute and shameful, who, when he hears
it said by very wise men that the soul is immortal, and not subject to
the decrees of the fates,
3595
would not throw himself headlong into all kinds of vice,
and
fearlessly
3596
engage in and
set about unlawful things?
who
would not, in short, gratify his
desires in all things demanded by his unbridled lust, strengthened even
further by its security and freedom from punishment?
3597
For what will hinder him from
doing so? The fear of a power above and divine judgment?
And how shall he be overcome by any fear or dread who has been
persuaded that he is immortal, just as the supreme God Himself, and
that no sentence can be pronounced upon him by God, seeing that there
is the same immortality in both, and that the one immortal being cannot
be troubled by the other, which is
only
its equal?
3598
3592
Capite cum censeatur.
3593
Lit., “poor in hearth, and of a poor hut.”
3594
So the
ms.
, reading
malis
,
for which Ursinus suggested
alis
, “on the wings of
which.”
3595
i.e.,
to death.
3596
The
ms.
reads
securus,
intrepidus
—“heedless, fearless;” the former word,
however, being marked as a gloss. It is rejected in all edd.,
except LB.
3597
Lit., “by the freedom of impunity.”
3598
Lit., “the one (immortality)…in respect of the equality of
condition of the other”—
nec in alterius (immortalitatis)
altera (immortalitatas) possit æqualitate conditionis vexari
;
the reference being clearly to the immediately preceding clause, with
which it is so closely connected logically and grammatically.
Orelli, however, would supply
anima
,
ἀπὸ
τοῦ κοινοῦ
, as he
puts it, of which nothing need be said. Meursius, with customary
boldness, emends
nec vi alterius altera
, “nor by the power
of one can the other,” etc.