The noble honour find in everything.For an enthusiasm which carries its possessor to the point where he feels no disquietude, but only admiration and emulation of what seems terrible, can never more be turned aside from what is honourable. With men of this sort it has already become a constant practice, on proceeding to any business, or on taking office, or on encountering any dispensation of Fortune, to set before their eyes good men of the present or of the past, 7 and to reflect: ‘What would Plato have done in this case ? What would Epameinondas have said ? How would Lycurgus have conducted him self, or Agesilaus ?’ And before such mirrors as these, figuratively speaking, they array themselves or readjust their habit, and either repress some of their more ignoble utterances, or resist the onset of some emotion. True it is that those who have got by heart the names of the Idaean Dactyls 8 use them as charms against terrors, repeating each name with calm assurance; but it is also true that the thought and recollection of good men almost instantly comes to mind and gives support to those who are making progress towards virtue, and in every onset of the emotions and in all difficulties keeps them upright and saves them from falling. Wherefore let this also serve you as a token by which you can mark the man who is advancing towards virtue.
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Whenever, therefore, we begin so to love good men, that not only, as Plato 1 puts
it, do we regard as blessed the man himself who has self-control, ‘and
blessed, too, anyone of the company which hears the words that come from the
lips of such a man,’ but also, through our admiration and affection
for his habit, gait, look, and smile, we are eager to join, as it were, and
cement ourselves to him, then we must believe that we are truly making progress.
Still more is this the case if we do not limit our admiration of the good to
their days of unclouded fortune, but if, just as lovers fondly welcome even
lisping or pallor in their fair ones,2 and as the tears and dejection of
Pantheia 3 in all her grief and wretchedness smote the heart of Araspes, so we do
not shrink at the thought of the exile of Aristeides, 4 the imprisonment of
Anaxagoras, or the penury of Socrates, or the sentence pronounced on Phocion, 5
but because we believe that virtue, even when attended by such afflictions, is
worthy of our love, we try to approach close to it, and at each experience of
this sort give utterance to this sentiment of Euripides, 6
[p. 453]
1 Plato, Laws, 711 E.
2 An echo from Plato, Republic, 474 E, which Plutarch cites more fully in Moralia, 45 A and 56 C.
3 Xenophon, Cyropaedia, v. 1. 2, and vi. 1. 31.
4 See Plutarch, Life of Aristeides, chap. vii. (323 A).
5 See Plutarch, Life of Phocion, chap. xxxv. (758 B).
6 Nauck, Trag. Gr. Frag., Eurip. No. 961.
7 Seneca (Epistulae Moral. ad Lucilium, i. II. 8) says that this idea comes from Epicurus.
8 Fabulous gnomes associated with the Mount Ida of Crete and Phrygia. A possible connexion between these and the ‘Ephesia grammata’ is discussed by Chester C. McCown in the Trans. of the American Philological Assoc. vol. liv. (1923) pp. 128 ff.; cf. also Plutarch, Mor. 706 D.
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1927. 1.
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