על שכל אדם ישר הוא בן חורין י״זEvery Good Man is Free 17
א׳
1XVII. [110] I know many cases of wrestlers and pancratiasts so full of ambition and eagerness for victory that though their bodies have lost their strength, they renew their vigour and continue their athletic efforts with nothing to help them but the soul, which they have inured to despise terrors, and in this they persevere to their last gasp.
ב׳
2[111] Then, if those who exercise their bodily vigour have surmounted the fear of death whether in the hope of victory or to avoid seeing themselves defeated, can we suppose that those who drill the invisible mind within them, the veritable man, housed within the form which the senses perceive,—those who train it with words of philosophy and deeds of virtue will not be willing to die for their freedom and so complete their appointed pilgrimage with a spirit that defies enslavement!
ג׳
3[112] It is told of two athletes in a sacred contest how possessed of equal strength, each offensive taken by the one returned in equal measure by the other, they never flagged until both fell dead. “Ah! then thy own prowess will destroy thee,” are words which will apply to such as these.
ד׳
4[113] Surely then if to die for a garland of wild olive or parsley is a glory to the rivals in the arena, a far greater glory is it to the wise to die for freedom, the love of which stands in very truth implanted in the soul like nothing else, not as a casual adjunct but an essential part of its unity, and cannot be amputated without the whole system being destroyed as the result.
ה׳
5[114] Students who investigate examples of high excellence sing the praises of the Laconian boy, to whom race or his own nature gave a spirit which would not brook enslavement. Carried into captivity by one of Antigonus’s people, he submitted to such tasks as became a freeman, but stood out against those of a slavish kind, declaring that he would not be a slave. And although by reason of his tender years he had not received the solid nutrition of the laws of Lycurgus, yet from his mere taste of them, he judged that death was a happier lot than his present valueless life, and despairing of ransom gladly put an end to himself.
ו׳
6[115] There is also the story of the Dardanian women taken prisoners by the Macedonians, how holding slavery to be the worst disgrace they threw the children which they were nurturing into the deepest part of the river, exclaiming, “You at least shall not be slaves but ere you have begun your life of misery shall cut short your destined span and pass still free along the final road which all must tread.”
ז׳
7[116] Polyxena, too, is described by the tragedian Euripides as thinking little of death but much of her freedom when she says:
Willing I die, that none may touch my flesh—
For I will give my throat with all my heart.
In heaven’s name let me go free, then slay me
That I may die still free.
Willing I die, that none may touch my flesh—
For I will give my throat with all my heart.
In heaven’s name let me go free, then slay me
That I may die still free.