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Now since you are not unaware that I am a
sophist, let me marshal my arguments in some order
by defining temperance and analysing the desires
according to their kinds. Temperance,1 then, is a curtailment and an ordering of the desires that eliminate those that are extraneous or superfluous and
discipline in modest and timely fashion those that
are essential.2 You can, of course, observe countless
differences in the desires3 . . . and the desire to
eat and drink is at once natural and essential, while
the pleasures of love, which, though they find their
origin in nature, yet may be forgone and discarded
without much inconvenience, have been called
natural, but not essential. But there are desires of
another kind, neither essential nor natural, that are
imported in a deluge from without as a result of
your inane illusions and because you lack true culture.
So great is their multitude that the natural desires
are, every one of them, all but overwhelmed, as
though an alien rabble were overpowering the native
citizenry. But beasts have souls completely inaccessible and closed to these adventitious passions and
live their lives as free from empty illusions as though
they dwelt far from the sea.4 They fall short in the
matter of delicate and luxurious living, but solidly
[p. 515]
protect their sobriety and the better regulation of
their desires since those that dwell within them are
neither numerous nor alien.
Certainly there was a time when I myself, no less
than you now, was dazzled by gold and held it to be
an incomparable possession ; so likewise I was caught
by the lure of silver and ivory and the man who had
most property of this sort seemed to me to be a
blissful favourite of the gods, whether he was a
Phrygian or a Carian, one more villainous than
Dolon5 or more unfortunate than Priam.6 In that
situation, constantly activated7 by these desires, I
reaped no joy or pleasure from the other things of
life, which I had sufficiently and to spare. I grumbled
at my life, finding myself destitute of the most important things and a loser in the lottery of fortune.
This is the reason why, as I recall, when I saw you
once in Crete tricked out in holiday attire, it was not
your intellect or your virtue that I envied, but the
softness of the elegantly woven garment and the
beautiful wool of your purple cloak that I admired and
gaped at (the clasp, I believe, was of gold and had
some frivolity worked on it in exquisitely fine intaglio). I followed you about as enchanted as a woman.
But now I am rid and purified of all those empty illusions.8 I have no eyes for gold and silver and can
pass them by just like any common stone ; and as for
your fine robes and tapestries, I swear there's nothing
sweeter for me to rest in when I'm full than deep,
[p. 517]
soft mud.9 None, then, of such adventitious desires
has a place in our souls; our life for the most part is
controlled by the essential desires and pleasures. As
for those that are non-essential, but merely natural,
we resort to them without either irregularity or excess.
1 See Epicurus, frag. 456 (Usener); contrast Aristotle, Nic. Ethics iii. 10 ff. (1117 b 23 ff.); [Plato], Def. 411 e; al. For the temperance of animals see Aristotle, De Gen. Animal. i. 4 (717 a 27).
2 Cf. Mor. 127 a, 584 d f.
3 There is probably a short lacuna at this point.
4 See Plato, Laws, 704 e ff. (and Shorey, What Plato Said, ad loc. p. 630): the sea is the symbol of mischievous foreign influence. Cf. Aristotle, Politics, 1327 a 11 ff.
5 See Iliad, x, where Dolon betrays Troy.
6 See especially his speech, Iliad, xxii. 38-76.
7 Like a puppet on strings.
8 Man alone has luxury: Pliny, Nat. Hist. vii. 5.
9 Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. v. 45.