This was his revenge. Where conduct, as in
this case, is so much on a par with Christian conduct, τοῖς
ἡμετέροις. I maintain that it is well worth our while to
copy these great men. The behaviour of Socrates on this occasion
is akin to the precept that we are by no means to take revenge, but to
turn the other cheek to the smiter. So the conduct of Pericles
and Euclid matches the commands to put up with persecutors, and to bear
their wrath with meekness, and to invoke not cursing but blessing on
our enemies. He who has been previously instructed in these
examples will no longer regard the precepts as impracticable. I
should like, too, to instance the conduct of Alexander, when he had
captured the daughters of Darius. cf.
Plutarch, Alex. and Arrian. II. xii. Their
beauty is described as extraordinary, and Alexander would not so much
as look at them, for he thought it shameful that a conqueror of men
should be vanquished by women. This is of a piece with the
statement that he who looks at a woman impurely, even though he do not
actually commit the act of adultery with her, is not free from guilt,
because he has allowed lust to enter his heart. Then there is the
case of Clinias, the follower of Pythagoras: it is difficult to believe
this is a case of accidental, and not intentional, imitation of our
principles. Clinias was a
contemporary of Plato (Diog. Laert. ix. 40). What of
him? He might have escaped a fine of three talents by taking an
oath, but he preferred to pay rather than swear, and this when he would
have sworn truly. He appears to me to have heard of the precept
which orders us to swear not at all. St. Basil can
hardly imagine that Clinias lived after Christ; yet Old Testament
prohibitions are against false swearing only. Possibly the
third commandment and such a passage as Lev. xix. 12, may have been in his mind. If
Clinias had lived some half a millennium later there seems no reason
why he should not have saved himself three talents by using the
words of the Apostle in 2
Cor. xi. 31. To return
to the point with which I began. We must not take everything
indiscriminately, but only what is profitable. It would be
shameful for us in the case
of food to reject the injurious, and at the same time, in the case of
lessons, to take no account of what keeps the soul alive, but, like
mountain streams, to sweep in everything that happens to be in
our way. The sailor does not trust himself to the mercy of the
winds, but steers his boat to the port; the archer aims at his mark;
the smith and the carpenter keep the end of the crafts in view.
What sense is there in our shewing ourselves inferior to these
craftsmen, though we are quite able to understand our own
affairs? In mere handicrafts is there some object and end in
labour, and is there no aim in the life of man, to which any one ought
to look who means to live a life better than the brutes? Were no
intelligence to be sitting at the tiller of our souls, we should be
dashed up and down in the voyage of life like boats that have no
ballast. It is just as with competitions in athletics, or, if you
like, in music. In competitions mere crowns are offered for
prizes, there is always training, and no one in training for wrestling
or the pancration i.e.
wrestling and boxing together. practices the harp or
flute. Certainly not Polydamas, who before his contests at the
Olympic games used to make chariots at full speed stand still, and so
kept up his strength. Paus. VI.
v. cf. Pers., Sat. i. 4. Milo, too,
could not be pushed off his greased shield, but, pushed as he was, held
on as tightly as statues fastened by lead. Paus. VI.
xiv.
In one word, training was the preparation for these feats.
Suppose they had neglected the dust and the gymnasia, and had given
their minds to the strains of Marsyas or Olympus, the
Phrygians, Marsyas,
the unhappy rival of Apollo, was said to be a native of
Celænæ in Phrygia. Olympus was a pupil of Marsyas
(Schol. in Aristoph. Eq. 9). By Plutarch
(Mus. xi.) he is called ἀρχηγὸς τῆς
῾Ελληνικῆς
καὶ καλῆς
μουσικῆς.
cf. Arist., Pol. VIII. v. 16. they would never have
won crowns or glory, nor escaped ridicule for their bodily
incapacity. On the other hand Timotheus did not neglect harmony
and spend his time in the wrestling schools. Had he done so it
would never have been his lot to surpass all the world in music, and to
have attained such extraordinary skill in his art as to be able to
rouse the soul by his sustained and serious melody, and then again
relieve and sooth it by his softer strains at his good pleasure.
By this skill, when once he sang in Phrygian strains to Alexander, he
is said to have roused the king to arms in the middle of a banquet, and
then by gentler music to have restored him to his boon
companions. cf.
Cic., Legg. ii. 15, Plutarch, De Mus. There are
two Timothei of musical fame, one anterior to Alexander. It
will be remembered that in Dryden’s Alexander’s
Feast “the king seized a flambeau with zeal to
destroy,” after the “Lydian measure” had
“soothed his soul to pleasures.” So great is the
importance, alike in music and in athletics, in view of the object to
be attained, of training.…