Volume I Part 17 (1/2)

265 Epict. _Ench._ xvii.

266 Epict. _Ench._ xi.

267 Seneca, _De Prov._ i.

268 Ibid. iv.

269 Marc. Aurel. ii. 2, 3.

270 The language in which the Stoics sometimes spoke of the inexorable determination of all things by Providence would appear logically inconsistent with free will. In fact, however, the Stoics a.s.serted the latter doctrine in unequivocal language, and in their practical ethics even exaggerated its power. Aulus Gellius (_Noct. Att._ vi.

2) has preserved a pa.s.sage in which Chrysippus exerted his subtlety in reconciling the two things. See, too, Arrian, i. 17.

271 We have an extremely curious ill.u.s.tration of this mode of thought in a speech of Archytas of Tarentum on the evils of sensuality, which Cicero has preserved. He considers the greatest of these evils to be that the vice predisposes men to unpatriotic acts. ”Nullam capitaliorem pestem quam corporis voluptatem, hominibus a natura datam.... Hinc patriae proditiones, hinc rerumpublicarum eversiones, hinc c.u.m hostibus clandestina colloquia nasci,” etc.-Cicero, _De Senect._ xii.

272 Diog. Laert. _Anax._

273 ”Cari sunt parentes, cari liberi, propinqui, familiares; sed omnes omnium caritates patria una complexa est; pro qua quis bonus dubitet mortem oppetere si ei sit profuturus?”-_De Offic._ i. 17.

274 See Seneca, _Consol. ad Helviam_ and _De Otio Sapien._; and Plutarch, _De Exilio_. The first of these works is the basis of one of the most beautiful compositions in the English language, Bolingbroke's _Reflections on Exile_.

_ 275 De Officiis_.

_ 276 Epist._ i. 10.

277 ”Tota enim philosophorum vita, ut ait idem, commentatio mortis est.”-Cicero, _Tusc._ i. 30, _ad fin_.

_ 278 Essay on Death._

279 Spinoza, _Ethics_, iv. 67.

280 Camden. Montalembert notices a similar legend as existing in Brittany (_Les Moines d'Occident_, tome ii. p. 287). Procopius (_De Bello Goth._ iv. 20) says that it is impossible for men to live in the west of Britain, and that the district is believed to be inhabited by the souls of the dead.

281 In his _De Sera Numinis Vindicta_ and his _Consolatio ad Uxorem_.

282 In the _Phaedo_, _pa.s.sim_. See, too, Marc. Aurelius, ii. 12.

283 See a very striking letter of Epicurus quoted by Diogenes Laert. in his life of that philosopher. Except a few sentences, quoted by other writers, these letters were all that remained of the works of Epicurus, till the recent discovery of one of his treatises at Herculaneum.

_ 284 Tusc. Quaest._ i.

_ 285 Consol. ad Polyb._ xxvii.

286 Maury, _Hist. des Religions de la Grece antique_, tom. i. pp.

582-588. M. Ravaisson, in his Memoir on Stoicism (_Acad. des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres_, tom. xxi.) has enlarged on the terrorism of paganism, but has, I think, exaggerated it. Religions which selected games as the natural form of devotion can never have had any very alarming character.

287 Plutarch, _Ad Apollonium_.

288 Ibid.

289 Cic. _Tusc. Quaest._ i.