על שכל אדם ישר הוא בן חורין א׳Every Good Man is Free 1
א׳
1I. [1] Our former treatise, Theodotus, had for its theme “every bad man is a slave” and established it by many reasonable and indisputable arguments. The present treatise is closely akin to that, its full brother, indeed, we may say its twin, and in it we shall show that every man of worth is free.
ב׳
2[2] Now we are told that the saintly company of the Pythagoreans teaches among other excellent doctrines this also, “walk not on the highways.” This does not mean that we should climb steep hills—the school was not prescribing foot-weariness—but it indicates by this figure that in our words and deeds we should not follow popular and beaten tracks.
ג׳
3[3] All genuine votaries of philosophy have obeyed the injunction, divining in it a law, or rather super-law, equivalent to an oracle. Rising above the opinions of the common herd they have opened up a new pathway, in which the outside world can never tread, for studying and discerning truths, and have brought to light the ideal forms which none of the unclean may touch.
ד׳
4[4] By unclean I mean all those who without ever tasting education at all, or else having received it in a crooked and distorted form, have changed the stamp of wisdom’s beauty into the ugliness of sophistry.
ה׳
5[5] These, unable to discern the conceptual light through the weakness of the soul’s eye, which cannot but be beclouded by the flashing rays, as dwellers in perpetual night disbelieve those who live in the daylight, and think that all their tales of what they have seen around them, shown clearly by the unalloyed radiance of the sunbeams, are wild phantom-like inventions no better than the illusions of the puppet show.
ו׳
6[6] “Surely it is an absurdity,” they think, “a mere showman’s trick, to apply names in this way, to give the name of exile to men who not only spend their days in the heart of the city, but also sit as councillors, jurymen, and members of assembly, and sometimes undertake the burden of administering the market, or managing the gymnasium and the other public services:
ז׳
7[7] to call those citizens who have either never been placed on the burgess rolls or have been condemned to disfranchisement or banishment, men chased beyond the frontiers, unable not only to set foot in the country but even to get a distant view of their ancestral soil, unless hounded thither by some kind of avenging furies they come courting death. For when they return there are numberless ministers of punishment waiting for them, spurred to vengeance by their personal feelings and also ready to do service to the commands of the law.”