Snippets from the Handbook 7

When anything, from the meanest thing upwards, is attractive or serviceable or an object of affection, remember always to say to yourself, "What is its nature?" 

If you are fond of a jug, say you are fond of a jug; then you will not be disturbed if it be broken. 

If you kiss your child or your wife, say to yourself that you are kissing a human being, for then if death strikes it you will not be disturbed. 

—Epictetus, The Handbook 3 

IMAGE: Elizabeth Nourse, The Kiss (1906) 

Jottings on Marcus 9

This you must always bear in mind, what is the Nature of the whole, and what is my nature, and how this is related to that, and what kind of a part it is of what kind of a whole, and that there is no one who hinders you from always doing and saying the things which are according to the Nature of which you are a part. 

—from Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.9 

How often have I been told to "look at the big picture"? It's good advice, so I won't get too caught up in the details, but at the same time, I shouldn't think that the whole is somehow at the expense of the parts. 

My own nature is not worthless in the face of all Nature, and my own actions are not meaningless in the context of Providence. The purpose of the big and the small are made to fit together. 

Whatever else is meant to happen, my choices have their necessary place. I am called to choose well. 

IMAGE: Albrecht Dürer, Celestial Hemispheres (1515) 

Udana 1.4

Thus have I heard. On a certain occasion the Exalted One, soon after the attainment of Buddhahood, dwelt at Uruvela on the banks of the Neranjara stream, at the foot of the Goatherd's Banyan tree. At that time, the Exalted One, after remaining in a sitting posture for seven days, experienced the bliss of Emancipation. And the Exalted One at the end of the seventh day arose from the state of trance.

Now a certain Brahmana of haughty disposition went to where the Blessed One was and drawing near he saluted the Blessed One and after exchanging with him the compliments of friendship and civility, he stationed himself respectfully on one side and while thus standmg he said to the Blessed One; "What, Lord Gotama, is the standard of excellence for a Brahmana, and what is the nature of the works he should perform?" 

And the Blessed One in this connection, on that occasion, breathed forth this solemn utterance: 

"He who has put away evil, who is humble, free from impurity, self-restrained, versed in knowledge, leading a holy life,
That man may be truly called a Brahmana.
For him there are no desires anywhere in the world." 

Seneca, Moral Letters 88.1

Letter 88: On liberal and vocational studies   
 
You have been wishing to know my views with regard to liberal studies. My answer is this: I respect no study, and deem no study good, which results in money-making. 
 
Such studies are profit-bringing occupations, useful only in so far as they give the mind a preparation and do not engage it permanently. One should linger upon them only so long as the mind can occupy itself with nothing greater; they are our apprenticeship, not our real work.
 
Hence you see why “liberal studies” are so called; it is because they are studies worthy of a free-born gentleman. 
 
But there is only one really liberal study—that which gives a man his liberty. It is the study of wisdom, and that is lofty, brave, and great-souled. All other studies are puny and puerile. 
 
You surely do not believe that there is good in any of the subjects whose teachers are, as you see, men of the most ignoble and base stamp? We ought not to be learning such things; we should have done with learning them. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 88 
 
On the rare occasions when folks read one of my informal reflections, they are often disappointed that I haven’t thoroughly “explained” the text to them. 
 
This would not surprise them, however, if they observed the way I teach; I have no intention of just giving you an answer, because I’m not even sure I have one for myself, and I would much rather we spend some time working through it together. How can anyone arrive at a conclusion if he hasn’t done the reasoning for himself, step by trying step? 
 
Of all Seneca’s letters, this is surely the one I have written about the most. I have a scholarly interest in the topic, of course, but my greater concern has always been how the practice of the liberal arts is an expression of a radically different model of the human person, so firmly opposed to our usual way of treating people as mere producers and consumers. 
 
Once we recognize something more about our true nature, we must then reconsider our assumptions about what it means to learn. 
 
If you believe that man is only made to increase the goods of his body, then you might be right to pursue an education that will help you become richer and more gratified. If, on the other hand, you believe that man is first made to increase the goods of his soul, then you will seek out an education to help you become wiser and more loving. 
 
My attachment to Stoicism is largely due to its insistence on virtue as our highest good, and my attachment to the liberal arts is largely due to their suitability as aids for becoming more virtuous. 
 
I am regularly told how I am not being “realistic”, since our students need good jobs in order to be successful. Now while I would never deny the utility of putting food on the table and a roof over our heads, I’m afraid I have very different standard of what constitutes success: I consider a life to be “real” when we fulfill the end for which we are created, not when we settle for sitting in a cubicle while filling out spreadsheets, just so that one man out of many thousands can then buy himself a vacation home. 
 
As creatures of mind and will, we are perfected by wisdom and virtue. No amount of money will do us a bit of good without an excellence of character, and the most immediate proof for this is the way most of my generation crawls along in a state of abject misery. We’ve already tried economic efficiency—now maybe it’s time to search for a moral compass. 
 
So, no, I will not try to qualify what Seneca has said. If we really wish to be free, we should begin by improving our powers of judgment. A true liberty is not about manipulating the circumstances, but about ruling ourselves, such that we are prepared to accept any variation of fortune as an opportunity to act from sound principles. 
 
When the university administrator praises such noble values, be sure to check if his words are then matched by his deeds. All too often, you will find that he is actually just running a business, and he has little interest in offering a service. In discovering how he lacks integrity, you are a step closer to choosing a very different path. 

—Reflection written in 2/2014 

IMAGE: Niccolo Giolfino, The Liberal Arts (c. 1520) 

Bach 11, Brandenburg Concerto 2

Johann Sebastian Bach, Brandenburg Concerto no. 2 in F major, BWV 1047, Netherlands Bach Society 

Sayings of Publilius Syrus 203

An over-taxed patience gives way to fierce anger. 

Stobaeus on Stoic Ethics 24

Again, of good things, some are things which exist in themselves, and some are relative dispositions. 

Knowledge, just action, and similar things are things which exist in themselves. Honor, goodwill, friendship, and agreement are relative. 

And knowledge is a grasp which is secure and unchangeable by argument; another definition: knowledge is a complex system of grasps of this sort, such as knowledge of the particulars, which is, in the virtuous man, rational; another definition: a complex system of craftsmanlike knowledge, which provides its own stability, which is what the virtues are like; another definition: a condition receptive of presentations which is unchangeable by argument, which they say consists in a tension and power of the soul. 

Friendship is a community of life. Agreement is a sharing of opinions about things relevant to life. 

Within friendship, familiarity is friendship with people who are well known to you; habituation is friendship with people you have become accustomed to; companionship is friendship by choice, such as that with one’s contemporaries; guest-friendship is friendship with foreigners; there is also a kind of family friendship between relatives; and an erotic friendship based on sexual love. 

And painlessness and organization are the same as temperance, just as insight and wits are the same as prudence and sharing and generosity are the same as good-heartedness; for they have been given names by reference to their relative dispositions. And one must note this too in each of the other virtues. 

IMAGE: Robert Lewis Reid, Knowledge (1896) 

Proverbs 5:15-23

[15] Drink water from your own cistern,
flowing water from your own well.
[16] Should your springs be scattered abroad,
streams of water in the streets?
[17] Let them be for yourself alone,
and not for strangers with you.
[18] Let your fountain be blessed,
and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
[19] a lovely hind, a graceful doe.
Let her affection fill you at all times with delight,
be infatuated always with her love.
[20] Why should you be infatuated, my son, with a loose woman
and embrace the bosom of an adventuress?
[21] For a man's ways are before the eyes of the Lord,
and he watches all his paths.
[22] The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him,
and he is caught in the toils of his sin.
[23] He dies for lack of discipline,
and because of his great folly he is lost. 

IMAGE: Fleury Francois Richard, Young Woman at a Fountain (1824) 

Stonehenge

J.M.W. Turner, Stonehenge (1828) 

Seneca, Moral Letters 87.14

Let us suppose that we have been summoned to an assembly; an act dealing with the abolition of riches has been brought before the meeting. Shall we be supporting it, or opposing it, if we use these syllogisms? 
 
Will these syllogisms help us to bring it about that the Roman people shall demand poverty and praise it—poverty, the foundation and cause of their empire—and, on the other hand, shall shrink in fear from their present wealth, reflecting that they have found it among the victims of their conquests, that wealth is the source from which office-seeking and bribery and disorder have burst into a city once characterized by the utmost scrupulousness and sobriety, and that because of wealth an exhibition all too lavish is made of the spoils of conquered nations; reflecting, finally, that whatever one people has snatched away from all the rest may still more easily be snatched by all away from one? 
 
Nay, it were better to support this law by our conduct and to subdue our desires by direct assault rather than to circumvent them by logic. If we can, let us speak more boldly; if not, let us speak more frankly. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 87 

 
My stodgy friends are forever chasing after the almighty dollar, while my edgy friends are plotting to blow up the banks, but they are all working from the false assumption that our lives must be defined by the struggle between the haves and the have-nots. It never occurs to any of them how the only battle of consequence is the one between our virtues and our vices. 
 
Seneca does not hate riches, but he is concerned that a reliance on prosperity will be a deathblow to integrity. In the end, money is nothing more than a means of exchange, and we should really be asking ourselves whether there is greater worth in character or in commodities. The price we are willing to pay will depend upon our deeper principles, such that decent folks will place more value in compassion than they will in gold. 
 
If we cared first for the state of our souls, we would be content with very little property, knowing full well how a simplicity on the outside can reflect a purity on the inside. Do I need marble fixtures in order to increase my understanding? Must a swimming pool be a prerequisite for offering love? I’m afraid my longing for luxury is usually a sign that I am neglecting my humanity. 
 
Wherever charity is present, there will always be more than enough to go around. Even as the politicians promise to redistribute the wealth, and the economists contrive to create more of it, and the scholars scribble away at their treatises, those of common sense and goodwill are busy looking out for their neighbors, humbly aware of why there can never be a good for the one at the expense of another. 
 
Despite all the grandstanding, the world will not be saved by legislation, or fiscal policies, or chains of syllogisms. The progress begins when one man acts to restrain his avarice, and he thereby encourages the next man to pass it on. There is no other way to improve the human condition than the practice of human excellence, because virtues are ordinary habits, not pretentious abstractions. 
 
If I really want to be happy, I need to start taking less for myself and giving more of myself. 

—Reflection written in 2/2014 

Continuities

"Continuities"

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost, 

No birth, identity, form—no object of the world. 

Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing; 

Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain. 

Ample are time and space—ample the fields of Nature. 

The body, sluggish, aged, cold—the embers left from earlier fires, 

The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again; 

The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual; 

To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns, 

With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn. 

IMAGE: Vincent van Gogh, Sower at Sunset (1888) 

Dio Chrysostom, On Training for Public Speaking 4

Writing, however, I do not advise you to engage in with your own hand, or only very rarely, but rather to dictate to a secretary. 

For, in the first place, the one who utters his thoughts aloud is more nearly in the mood of a man addressing an audience than is one who writes, and, in the second place, less labor is involved. 

Again, while it contributes less to effectiveness⁠ in delivery than writing does, it contributes more to your habit of readiness. But when you do write, I do not think it best for you to write these made‑up school exercises; yet if you must write, take one of the speeches that you enjoy reading, preferably one of Xenophon's, and either oppose what he said, or advance the same arguments in a different way. 

And yet repeating what his speeches contain is better still if you have a good memory for it. For this makes one thoroughly familiar with both the way he expresses his thoughts and the accuracy with which his thoughts are conceived. 

I say this, not to encourage you to string together line for line an entire treatise, as schoolboys do, but that you may thoroughly master anything that happens to please you especially. I should have written at great length about this to a lad, but for you, this much is sufficient. For if you call to memory only very small portions, you will derive great benefit; whereas if you should feel disinclined and find the effort painful, this work is not absolutely necessary. 

Well, I seem to have extended my advice to great length, but you yourself are to blame for that by persuading and challenging me. Just as expert wrestlers sometimes give way to those who are weaker and make them believe that they are stronger, so you seem to have led me on to write and tell what you, as it happens, know better yourself, just as if you did not know it so well. 

But I should prefer, if it proved agreeable to you, that we should get together some time and by reading the ancient writers and discussing them render some service to each other. 

Just as it is not enough to say to painters and to sculptors⁠ that their colors should be just so and that their lines should be just so, but they derive the greatest help if the critic can see them at work, painting or modeling; and just as it is not sufficient for the gymnastic masters to name the different holds in wrestling, but they must go on and demonstrate them to the youth who wishes to learn; so too in consultations like this, the help would be greater if one were to see the man who has given the advice in action himself. 

I declare for my part that even if I had to read aloud to you while you listened, for the sake of helping you I should not hesitate, since I both love you and admire you for your ambition, and am grateful for the honor you have shown me. 

Simplicius, Commentary on Epictetus 12.2

. . . Now the allusion he has made use of for this purpose seems to be exceeding proper and pertinent; for the old moralists in their fables have commonly chosen the sea to represent the mortal state. The roughness of its waves, its frequent ebbs and floods, the tempestuous weather to which it lies exposed, and the suffocating all that sink into it, do abundantly justify the metaphor. 

By the ship may be meant, that which unites the soul to the body, and brings her into this mortal state, whether it be fate, or fortune, or whatever else you will please to call it. 

The master of this ship is God, who governs and disposes all things, and commands the souls into their respective bodies, according as His own Infinite Wisdom and tender care sees fit, and in proportion to their own deserts. 

The bringing this ship into port is the assigning to these souls their proper station, and country, and family; by virtue whereof, some are born in one climate and nation, and some in another: some are descended from great and noble families, and others meanly born; some of virtuous or healthful parents, and others of vicious and diseased ones. 

The going out for fresh water, is the care we take for supplying the necessities of nature, without which it is impossible that life should be supported: and indeed, what is there in this state of mortality of such general use? What that we can so little want, both for the making of our meat and drink, as water? 

What is intended by gathering salads, or shellfish by the by, himself has very elegantly informed us, by instancing in a wife, and an estate; and acquainting us withal, that when Providence is pleased to bestow them upon us, we are not to refuse them, but so neither are we to receive or value them, as either the principal and most desirable goods, or indeed such as are properly ours. 

For the first and chief good is that disposition of mind, which is ever obedient to the master of the ship, ever attentive to his call. Nor must we lay ourselves out upon these matters, as we were allowed to do upon water, or necessary things, but look upon them as additional comforts only, and such as help to make life easy and convenient. 

Now if this master calls us to the ship, and gives order for our returning back to himself, and to that which is our true, our native country: make the best of your way, says he, to the ship; leave everything that relates to this mortal life, be ready to obey his first orders, and do not loiter, or hanker upon anything behind, for fear, when nature cuts the cable, your inclinations still be left on shore. 

Go you must, that’s most certain, and therefore it is that he tells you, if you do not follow readily and cheerfully, and quit all of your own accord, you shall be tied neck and heels, like sheep, and thrown under the hatches. That is, you shall be forced, and torn away, and thrust out of the world, like those foolish and sheepish wretches, who die with cowardice, and reluctancy, and unmanly lamentations of themselves and their friends. 

But there is yet another caution observable here, which is that the person to whom the enjoyment of marriage, and such others as are the additional advantages of life, are allowed, must be sure to indulge himself in such enjoyment of them only, as is seasonable; that so, when he has taken as much of these as is fit for him, he may remove without any delay, and readily comply with the master’s first call. 

But if a man be old, and draws near his end, he will do best to keep himself wholly disengaged, and entertain himself with nothing so much, as the constant thought and expectation of the ship’s sailing, and his quitting the shore; for fear, when the time of his return comes, and the master calls, he be retarded by his burden, and fastened down to land, and be forced, with a great deal of unbecoming concern, to leave a young wife, and pretty children behind. 

And surely an old man, upon all accounts, has much greater reason to prepare for leaving the world, than to entertain himself with vain projects of settling in it. 

Dio Chrysostom, On Training for Public Speaking 3

When it comes to the orators, however, who does not know which are the best—Demosthenes for the vigor of his style, the impressiveness of his thought, and the copiousness of his vocabulary, qualities in which he surpasses all other orators; and Lysias for his brevity, the simplicity and coherence of his thought, and for his well concealed cleverness. 

However, I should not advise you to read these two chiefly, but Hypereides rather and Aeschines; for the faculties in which they excel are simpler, their rhetorical embellishments are easier to grasp, and the beauty of their diction is not one whit inferior to that of the two who are ranked first. But I should advise you to read Lycurgus⁠ as well, since he has a lighter touch than those others and reveals a certain simplicity and nobility of character in his speeches. 

At this point I say it is advisable—even if some one, after reading my recommendation of the consummate masters of oratory, is going to find fault—also not to remain unacquainted with the more recent orators, those who lived a little before our time;⁠ I refer to the works of such men as Antipater,⁠ Theodorus,⁠ Plution,⁠ and Conon,⁠ and to similar material. 

For the powers they display can be more useful to us because, when we read them, our judgment is not fettered and enslaved, as it is when we approach the ancients. For when we find that we are able to criticize what has been said, we are most encouraged to attempt the same things ourselves, and we find more pleasure in comparing ourselves with others when we are convinced that in the comparison we should be found to be not inferior to them, with the chance, occasionally, of being even superior. 

I shall now turn to the Socratics,⁠ writers who, I affirm, are quite indispensable to every man who aspires to become an orator. For just as no meat without salt will be gratifying to the taste, so no branch of literature, as it seems to me, could possibly be pleasing to the ear if it lacked the Socratic grace. 

It would be a long task to eulogize the others; even to read them is no light thing. But it is my own opinion that Xenophon, and he alone of the ancients, can satisfy all the requirements of a man in public life. 

Whether one is commanding an army in time of war, or is guiding the affairs of a state, or is addressing a popular assembly or a senate, or even if he were addressing a court of law and desired, not as a professional master of eloquence merely, but as a statesman or a royal prince, to utter sentiments appropriate to such a character at the bar of justice, the best exemplar of all, it seems to me, and the most profitable for all these purposes is Xenophon. 

For not only are his ideas clear and simple and easy for everyone to grasp, but the character of his narrative style is attractive, pleasing, and convincing, being in a high degree true to life in the representation of character, with much charm also and effectiveness, so that his power suggests not cleverness but actual wizardry. 

If, for instance, you should be willing to read his work on the March Inland very carefully, you will find no speech, such as you will one day possess the ability to make, whose subject matter he has not dealt with and can offer as a kind of norm to any man who wishes to steer his course by him or imitate him. 

If it is needful for the statesman to encourage those who are in the depths of despondency, time and again our writer shows how to do this; or if the need is to incite and exhort, no one who understands the Greek language could fail to be aroused by Xenophon's hortatory speeches. My own heart, at any rate, is deeply moved and at times I weep even as I read his account of all those deeds of valor. 

Or, if it is necessary to deal prudently with those who are proud and conceited and to avoid, on the one hand, being affected in any way by their displeasure, or, on the other, enslaving one's own spirit to them in unseemly fashion and doing their will in everything, guidance in this also is to be found in him. 

And also how to hold secret conferences both with generals apart from the common soldiers and with the soldiers in the same way;⁠ the proper manner of conversing with kings and princes; how to deceive enemies to their hurt and friends for their own benefit; how to tell the plain truth to those who are needlessly disturbed without giving offense, and to make them believe it; how not to trust too readily those in authority over you, and the means by which such persons deceive their inferiors, and the way in which men outwit and are outwitted—on all these points Xenophon's treatise⁠ gives adequate information. 

For I imagine that it is because he combines deeds with words, because he did not learn by hearsay nor by copying, but by doing deeds himself as well as telling of them, that he made his speeches most convincingly true to life in all his works and especially in this one which I chanced to mention. 

And be well assured that you will have no occasion to repent, but that both in the senate and before the people you will find this great man reaching out a hand to you if you earnestly and diligently read him. 

Simplicius, Commentary on Epictetus 12.1

As when a ship lies in port, and you go out for fresh water, you happen to meet with shellfish, or salads upon the coast; this is an accidental advantage, and beside your main purpose, but still you thoughts must be fixed upon the ship, and it should be your great care to attend the master’s call: that so, when he gives you the signal, you may quit all readily, and not be bound, and carried away by violence, as sheep must be served. 

So here in the affairs of the world, if it be your fortune, instead of fish or salad, to light upon a beloved wife or child, which give an agreeable relish to life, none of these matters must be suffered to detain you. 

But when the master gives you the signal, all must be left, and the best of your way made to the ship. But if you are in years, be sure you never stir far from the ship, for fear you be out of the way, when the master calls. 

Comment: 

He has by a short but ingenious discourse, endeavored to draw us off from the pursuit of those external advantages, upon which we are used to set so great a value, by showing us, that all these things are neither in our disposal, nor any such happiness as can be properly called ours. 

But now, lest this argument of his should be so far mistaken, or wrested beyond its true purpose, as to be thought to debar us of marriage, and other innocent enjoyments and satisfactions, and absolutely to forbid us the having any thing at all to do with the world and its advantages, he acquaints us in the next place, what things those are, which he allows the enjoyment of, and with what limitations we ought to enjoy them: 

That we should leave ourselves and them at the disposal of God, and resign all this to His Providence, without reserve; and then, in such an humble dependence as this is, to use them moderately, and to value them as they deserve: that our concern is due in the greatest measure, to the necessities of life, and such as human nature cannot subsist without. 

Which Epictetus here has expressed, by a ship’s watering: meaning by this, food, and raiment, and dwelling, and such other things, as they, who look no farther than just needful supplies, satisfy themselves withal. These things, therefore, are allowed to be a part of our care, provided it be but in the second place, and with subordination to a higher good. 

As for such things, as are not absolutely necessary, but only the conveniences of life, as a wife, children, estate, and the like, these he calls accidental advantages, and beside our main purpose; and therefore they are allowed the third place in our esteem. 

When a bountiful Providence bestows these upon us, we are to receive and use them seasonably; but be sure to keep our mind ever fixed upon our chief and most desirable good. 

But as for pleasures, and riches, and honors, and preferments, and such other impertinencies, he will not so much as admit these into the number of his accidental advantages, but supposes them inconsistent with a strictly rational and virtuous conversation. 

For these are what, he told us before, must be wholly laid aside: but the enjoyments of marriage, and such other conveniences of human nature, he advised to have suspended for a time only, while men were young and inexperienced in the study of virtue, that so their first beginnings might meet with no interruption, but take good root, and fasten upon the mind. 

And for this reason, when men have made some progress, and are arrived to such a degree of perfection, as may qualify them to use these with safety, then he allows them to enjoy them, provided still it be in the quality of an additional advantage, and not a principal design. . . . 

Dio Chrysostom, On Training for Public Speaking 2

So let us consider the poets: I would counsel you to read Menander of the writers of Comedy quite carefully, and Euripides of the writers of Tragedy, and to do so, not casually by reading them to yourself, but by having them read to you by others, preferably by men who know how to render the lines pleasurably, but at any rate so as not to offend. For the effect is enhanced when one is relieved of the preoccupation of reading. 

And let no one of the more "advanced" critics chide me for selecting Menander's plays in preference to the Old Comedy, or Euripides in preference to the earlier writers of Tragedy. For physicians do not prescribe the most costly diet for their patients, but that which is salutary. 

Now it would be a long task to enumerate all the advantages to be derived from these writers; indeed, not only has Menander's portrayal of every character and every charming trait surpassed all the skill of the early writers of Comedy, but the suavity and plausibility of Euripides, while perhaps not completely attaining to the grandeur of the tragic poet's⁠ way of deifying his characters, or to his high dignity, are very useful for the man in public life; and furthermore, he cleverly fills his plays with an abundance of characters and moving incidents, and strews them with maxims useful on all occasions, since he was not without acquaintance with philosophy. 

But Homer comes first and in the middle and last, in that he gives of himself to every boy and adult and old man just as much as each of them can take. 

Lyric and elegiac poetry too, and iambics and dithyrambs are very valuable for the man of leisure, but the man who intends to have a public career and at the same time to increase the scope of his activities and the effectiveness of his oratory, will have no time for them. 

But the historians for many reasons the statesman must read attentively, because, even apart from the speeches they contain, it is most essential that the statesman, the man who chooses to conduct public affairs, should be acquainted with measures and successes and failures, which happen not only in accordance with reasonable expectation, but also at times contrary thereto, to both men and states. 

And the reason for this statement is that it is the man with the widest knowledge of what had happened to others who will best carry out his own undertakings, and, so far as it is possible, safely, while every reverse he will bear nobly because of the fact that even in his successes he was never unaware of the possibility of a change to the opposite fortune. 

As for Herodotus, if you ever want real enjoyment, you will read him when quite at your ease, for the easy-going manner and charm of his narrative will give the impression that his work deals with stories rather than with actual history. 

But among the foremost historians I place Thucydides, and among those of second rank Theopompus;⁠ for not only is there a rhetorical quality in the narrative portion of his speeches, but he is not without eloquence nor negligent in expression, and the slovenliness of his diction is not so bad as to offend you. 

As for Ephorus,⁠ while he hands down to us a great deal of information about events, yet the tediousness and carelessness of his narrative style would not suit your purpose. 

Maxims of Goethe 95

The importunity of young dilettanti must be borne with goodwill; for as they grow old they become the truest worshippers of Art and the Master. 

IMAGE: Joshua Reynolds, A Meeting of the Society of Dilettanti (1777) 

Dio Chrysostom, On Training for Public Speaking 1

Although I had often praised your character as that of a good man who is worthy to be first among the best, yet I never admired it before as I do now. 

For that a man in the very prime of life and second to no one in influence, who possesses great wealth and has every opportunity to live in luxury by day and night, should in spite of all this reach out for education also and be eager to acquire training in eloquent speaking, and should display no hesitation even if it should cost toil, seems to me to give proof of an extraordinarily noble soul and one not only ambitious, but in very truth devoted to wisdom. 

And for that matter the best of the ancients said that they went on learning not only in the prime of life but also as they grew old.⁠ And you, as it seems to me, are altogether wise in believing that a statesman needs experience and training in public speaking and in eloquence. For it is true that this will prove of very great help toward making him beloved and influential and esteemed instead of being looked down upon. 

For when men are afraid, what does more to inspire them than the spoken word? And when they wax insolent and uplifted in spirit, what more effectively brings them down and chastens them? What has greater influence in keeping them from indulging their desires? Whose admonitions do they endure more meekly than the man's whose speech delights them? 

Time and again, at any rate, there may be seen in our cities one group of men spending, handing out largess, adorning their city with dedications, but the orators who support these measures getting the applause, as though they and not the others had brought these things about. 

For this same reason the poets of the earliest times, who received their gift of poetry from the gods, never spoke of either the strong or the beautiful as being "looked upon as gods," but reserved this praise for the orators. So it is because you not only have observed all this, but are also endeavoring to put it into practice that I commend and admire you.

And I acknowledge on my own behalf a gratitude beyond the ordinary because you have believed that I could be useful to you in carrying out this purpose and this endeavor. For up to the present, as one of the writers of old said that he was "a good enough prophet for his own self," so I too considered that I should do well enough for myself in oratory, though barely even that. 

But you elate me and persuade me to take courage, in the hope that I can be of use to one who not only has attained so high a degree of culture, but is also as gifted as yourself. And perhaps I could, just as a boy or some aged herdsman might, be useful to a strong and vigorous wayfarer in pointing out a shorter road or a beaten track of which he did not happen to know. 

But to cut my preface short,⁠ I must at once endeavour to carry out your instructions.

For a mere lad, now, or a young man who wishes to withdraw from political life and devote himself to training and to the acquisition of forensic ability, there is need of a different regimen in both tasks and activities. 

But you are not unacquainted with the task, nor are you able to forsake the political career, nor is it the eloquence and effectiveness of a pleader in the courts of law of which you stand in need, but rather that which is alike fitting and sufficient for a statesman. 

So first of all, you should know that you have no need of toil or exacting labor; for although, when a man has already undergone a great deal of training, these contribute very greatly to his progress, yet if he has had only a little, they will lessen his confidence and make him diffident about getting into action; just as with athletes who are unaccustomed to the training of the body, such training weakens them if they become fatigued by exercises which are too severe. 

But just as bodies unaccustomed to toil need anointing and moderate exercise rather than the training of the gymnasium, so you in preparing yourself for public speaking have need of diligence which has a tempering of pleasure rather than laborious training. 

Jacob's Ladder 14

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Jacob's Dream (c. 1729) 

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel 25

Salvator Rosa, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (c. 1660)