your evil, say, "Both of them are in my power? Neither can any man
deprive me of the good, nor involve me in the bad against my will. Why
do I not throw myself down and snore? for all that I have is safe. As
to the things which belong to others, he will look to them who gets
them, as they may be given by Him who has the power. Who am I who wish
to have them in this way or in that? is a power ofselecting them given
to me? has any person made me the dispenser of them? Those things are
enough for me over which I have power: I ought to manage them as well
as I can: and all the rest, as the Master of them may choose."
When a man has these things before his eyes, does he keep awake
and turn hither and thither? What would he have, or what does he
regret, Patroclus or Antilochus or Menelaus? For when did he suppose
that any of his friends was immortal, and when had he not before his
eyes that on the morrow or the day after he or his friend must die?
"Yes," he says, "but I thought that he would survive me and bring up
my son." You were a fool for that reason, and you were thinking of
what was uncertain. Why, then, do you not blame yourself, and sit
crying like girls? "But he used to set my food before me." Because
he was alive, you fool, but now he cannot: but Automedon will set it
before you, and if Automedon also dies, you will find another. But
if the pot, in which your meat was cooked, should be broken, must
you die of hunger, because you have not the pot which you are
accustomed to? Do you not send and buy a new pot? He says:

"No greater ill could fall on me."

Why is this your ill? Do you, then, instead of removing it, blame your
mother for not foretelling it to you that you might continue
grieving from that time? What do you think? do you not suppose that
Homer wrote this that we may learn that those of noblest birth, the
strongest and the richest, the most handsome, when they have not the
opinions which they ought to have, are not prevented from being most
wretched and unfortunate?

CHAPTER 11

About Purity

Some persons raise a question whether the social feeling is
contained in the nature of man; and yet I think that these same
persons would have no doubt that love of purity is certainly contained
in it, and that, if man is distinguished from other animals by
anything, he is distinguished by this. When, then, we see any other
animal cleaning itself, we are accustomed to speak of the act with
surprise, and to add that the animal is acting like a man: and, on the
other hand, if a man blames an animal for being dirty, straightway
as if we were making an excuse for it, we say that of course the
animal is not a human creature. So we suppose that there is
something superior in man, and that we first receive it from the Gods.
For since the Gods by their nature are pure and free from