This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
It should be the general rule to keep the young away from any association
with base men ; for they carry away something of their badness. This duty
Pythagoras 1 also has enjoined in the form of allegories which I shall now
quote and explain. For they contribute no small influence towards the
acquisition of virtue. For example :
‘Do not taste of black-tails 2 ;’ that is, ‘Do not
spend your time with men of black character, because of their
malevolence.’
‘Do not step over the beam of a balance’; that is, one should
give greatest heed to justice and not transgress it.
‘Do not sit on a peck measure’ ; as much as to say that we
should avoid idleness and have forethought for providing our daily bread.
‘Do not give your hand to everybody’ ; instead of, ‘Do
not make friends too readily.’
‘Do not wear a tight ring’ ; means that one should live his
life unhampered, and not subject it to any bond.
‘Do not poke a fire with steel’ ; 3 instead of,
[p. 61]
‘Do not provoke an angry man.’ Indeed, it is wrong to do so,
and we should yield to men who are in a temper.
‘Do not eat your heart’ ; as much as to say, ‘Do not
injure your soul by wasting it with worries.’
‘Abstain from beans’ ; means that a man should keep out of
politics, for beans were used in earlier times for voting upon the removal
of magistrates from office. 4
‘Do not put food into a slop-pail’ ; signifies that it is not
fitting to put clever speech into a base mind. For speech is the food of
thought, and baseness in men makes it unclean.
‘Do not turn back on reaching the boundaries’ ; that is, when
people are about to die and see the boundary of their life close at hand,
they should bear all this with serenity and not be faint-hearted.
I return to the subject suggested at the beginning of the chapter. As I said
there, the young should be kept away from every sort of base men, and most
of all from flatterers. Let me repeat here what I say over and over again to
many fathers: There is no class of persons more pernicious than flatterers,
nor any that more surely and quickly gives youth a nasty tumble. They
utterly ruin both fathers and sons, bringing to sorrow the old age of those
and the youth of these, and dangling pleasure as an irresistible lure to get
their advice taken. To sons who are to inherit wealth fathers commend
sobriety, flatterers drinking to excess ; fathers commend self-restraint,
flatterers profligacy ; fathers
[p. 63] frugality, flatterers extravagance ; fathers industry,
flatterers indolence, saying, ‘All life is but a moment. We must
live, not merely exist.5 Why should we give a thought to your father's
threats ? He's an old twaddler with one foot already in the grave, and
before long we'll take his coffin on our shoulders and carry him
out.’ Another of them posts a drab in the young man's path, or
prostitutes a married woman for him, and spoils and wastes the father's
provision for old age. Detestable is their whole tribe, pretenders of
friendship, without a vestige of honest speech, flatterers of the rich but
despisers of the poor, addressing themselves with instinctive art to the
young, grinning broadly when their patrons laugh, spurious claimants to any
spirit, and bastard members of human life, subsisting at the beck and nod of
the wealthy ; free-born by freak of fortune, but slaves by choice. Whenever
they are not treated with insult, they feel themselves insulted because then
they do not fulfil the purpose for which they are kept. So if any father is
concerned for the good upbringing of his children, he must drive away these
detestable creatures, and quite as much must he drive away schoolmates who
show depravity, for these also are capable of corrupting the most likely
natures.
1 Cf. Athenaeus, x. 77 (p. 452 D); Iamblichus, Protrept. chap. 21 (pp. 131-160); Diogenes Laertius, viii. 1, 17-18; and Plutarch, Life of Numa, chap. 14 (69 C).
2 The name of a fish.
3 Cf. the Moralia 281 A and 354 E, and Life of Numa, chap. 14 (69 C) where Plutarch has ‘with a sword.’
4 A form of recall (ἀποχειροτονία); cf. Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, chap. 61.
5 Apparently adapted from some comedy; cf. Kock, Com. Att. Frag. iii. p. 643.