This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Table of Contents:
Click on a word to bring up parses, dictionary entries, and frequency statistics
‘διὰ τί τοῖς ἱερεῦσι τούτοις ἀρχὴν οὐκ
ἐφεῖτο λαβεῖν οὐδὲ μετελθεῖν, ἀλλὰ ῥαβδούχῳ τε χρῶνται καὶ δίφρον
ἡγεμονικὸν ἐπὶ τιμῇ καὶ παραμυθίᾳ τοῦ μὴ ἄρχειν ἔχουσι;᾽’
πότερον, ὡς ἐνιαχοῦ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀντίρροπον ἦν τὸ τῆς ἱερωσύνης
ἀξίωμα πρὸς τὸ τῆς βασιλείας, καὶ μὴ 1 τυχόντας ἱερεῖς ἀπεδείκνυσαν ἢ μᾶλλον ὅτι, τῶν μὲν ἱερέων
ὡρισμένας πράξεις ἐχόντων τῶν δ᾽ ἀρχόντων ἀτάκτους καὶ ἀορίστους, οὐκ ἦν
δυνατὸν εἰς ἓν ἅμα τῶν καιρῶν συμπεσόντων ἑκατέρῳ παρεῖναι τὸν αὐτόν,
ἀλλ᾽ ἔδει θάτερα πολλάκις ἀμφοτέρων ἐπειγόντων ἀπολείποντα νῦν μὲν ἀσεβεῖν τοὺς θεούς, νῦν δὲ βλάπτειν τοὺς
πολίτας; ἢ ταῖς ἀνθρωπίναις [p. 320] ἐνορῶντες ἀρχαῖς οὐκ
ἐλάττονα τῆς ἐξουσίας τὴν ἀνάγκην προσοῦσαν, καὶ τὸν ἄρχοντα δήμου,
καθάπερ Ἱπποκράτης 2 ἔφη τὸν ἰατρόν, δεινὰ μὲν ὁρῶντα δεινῶν 3 δ᾽
ἁπτόμενον, ἐπ᾽ ἀλλοτρίοις δὲ κακοῖς ἰδίας λύπας καρπούμενον, οὐχ ὅσιον ἡγοῦντο θύειν θεοῖς καὶ ἱερῶν
κατάρχεσθαι γενόμενον ἐν καταδίκαις καὶ θανατώσεσι πολιτῶν, πολλάκις δὲ καὶ
συγγενῶν καὶ οἰκείων, οἷα καὶ Βρούτῳ συνέτυχε;
Plutarch. Moralia. Gregorius N. Bernardakis. Leipzig. Teubner. 1889. 2.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This text was converted to electronic form by optical character recognition and has been proofread to a high level of accuracy.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.