(17) See "Symp." iii. 11; "Cyrop." II. ii. 14; Plat. "Ion," 535 E; L.
Dindorf ad loc.
Ar. Yes, but I must tell you I have a simple remedy against all such misadventures. I do not confine myself to any single civil community. I roam the wide world a foreigner.
Soc. Well, now, that is a masterly stroke, upon my word! (18) Of course, ever since the decease of Sinis, and Sciron, and Procrustes, (19) foreign travellers have had an easy time of it. But still, if I bethink me, even in these modern days the members of free communities do pass laws in their respective countries for self-protection against wrong-doing. Over and above their personal connections, they provide themselves with a host of friends; they gird their cities about with walls and battlements; they collect armaments to ward off evil-doers; and to make security doubly sure, they furnish themselves with allies from foreign states. In spite of all which defensive machinery these same free citizens do occasionally fall victims to injustice. But you, who are without any of these aids; you, who pass half your days on the high roads where iniquity is rife; (20) you, who, into whatever city you enter, are less than the least of its free members, and moreover are just the sort of person whom any one bent on mischief would single out for attack—yet you, with your foreigner's passport, are to be exempt from injury? So you flatter yourself. And why? Will the state authorities cause proclamation to be made on your behalf: "The person of this man Aristippus is secure; let his going out and his coming in be free from danger"? Is that the ground of your confidence? or do you rather rest secure in the consciousness that you would prove such a slave as no master would care to keep? For who would care to have in his house a fellow with so slight a disposition to work and so strong a propensity to extravagance? Suppose we stop and consider that very point: how do masters deal with that sort of domestic? If I am not mistaken, they chastise his wantonness by starvation; they balk his thieving tendencies by bars and bolts where there is anything to steal; they hinder him from running away by bonds and imprisonment; they drive the sluggishness out of him with the lash. Is it not so? Or how do you proceed when you discover the like tendency in one of your domestics?
(18) Or, "Well foiled!" "A masterly fall! my prince of wrestlers."
(19) For these mythical highway robbers, see Diod. iv. 59; and for
Sciron in particular, Plut. "Theseus," 10.
(20) Or, "where so many suffer wrong."
Ar. I correct them with all the plagues, till I force them to serve me properly. But, Socrates, to return to your pupil educated in the royal art, (21) which, if I mistake not, you hold to be happiness: how, may I ask, will he be better off than others who lie in evil case, in spite of themselves, simply because they suffer perforce, but in his case the hunger and the thirst, the cold shivers and the lying awake at nights, with all the changes he will ring on pain, are of his own choosing? For my part I cannot see what difference it makes, provided it is one and the same bare back which receives the stripes, whether the whipping be self-appointed or unasked for; nor indeed does it concern my body in general, provided it be my body, whether I am beleaguered by a whole armament of such evils (22) of my own will or against my will—except only for the folly which attaches to self-appointed suffering.
(21) Cf. below, IV. ii. 11; Plat. "Statesm." 259 B; "Euthyd." 291 C;
K. Joel, op. cit. p. 387 foll. "Aristippus anticipates Adeimantus"
("Rep." 419), W. L. Newman, op. cit. i. 395.
(22) Cf. "suffers the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."
Soc. What, Aristippus, does it not seem to you that, as regards such matters, there is all the difference between voluntary and involuntary suffering, in that he who starves of his own accord can eat when he chooses, and he who thirsts of his own free will can drink, and so for the rest; but he who suffers in these ways perforce cannot desist from the suffering when the humour takes him? Again, he who suffers hardship voluntarily, gaily confronts his troubles, being buoyed on hope (23)—just as a hunter in pursuit of wild beasts, through hope of capturing his quarry, finds toil a pleasure—and these are but prizes of little worth in return for their labours; but what shall we say of their reward who toil to obtain to themselves good friends, or to subdue their enemies, or that through strength of body and soul they may administer their households well, befriend their friends, and benefit the land which gave them birth? Must we not suppose that these too will take their sorrows lightly, looking to these high ends? Must we not suppose that they too will gaily confront existence, who have to support them not only their conscious virtue, but the praise and admiration of the world? (24) And once more, habits of indolence, along with the fleeting pleasures of the moment, are incapable, as gymnastic trainers say, of setting up (25) a good habit of body, or of implanting in the soul any knowledge worthy of account; whereas by painstaking endeavour in the pursuit of high and noble deeds, as good men tell us, through endurance we shall in the end attain the goal. So Hesiod somewhere says: (26)
Wickedness may a man take wholesale with ease, smooth is the way
and her dwelling-place is very nigh; but in front of virtue the
immortal gods have placed toil and sweat, long is the path and
steep that leads to her, and rugged at the first, but when the
summit of the pass is reached, then for all its roughness the path
grows easy.
(23) Cf. above, I. vi. 8.
(24) Or, "in admiration of themselves, the praise and envy of the
world at large."
(25) See Hippocrates, "V. Med." 18.
(26) Hesiod, "Works and Days," 285. See Plat. "Prot." 340 C; "Rep."
ii. 364 D; "Laws," iv. 718 E.
And Ephicharmus (27) bears his testimony when he says:
The gods sell us all good things in return for our labours.
(27) Epicharmus of Cos, the chief comic poet among the Dorians, fl.
500 B.C. Cf. Plat. "Theaet." 152 E, "the prince of comedy";
"Gorg." 505 D.