על שכל אדם ישר הוא בן חורין כ״אEvery Good Man is Free 21
א׳
1XXI. [147] [We must be careful, therefore, not to take a wild beast of this kind, which displays not only strength, but by the terrors of its appearance, its invincible and formidable nature.]
ב׳
2[148] Places which serve as sanctuaries often provide the bond servants who take refuge in them with the same security and licence of speech as if they enjoyed equal rights and privileges with the rest. And one may see those whose servitude is immemorial handed down from their great-grandfathers and earlier ancestors by a kind of family succession, talking freely with complete fearlessness, when sitting in temples as suppliants.
ג׳
3[149] Some even show not mere equality but great superiority in the energy and disdain with which they dispute questions of justice with their owners. For while the owners however highly born may well become as slaves through the conscience which convicts them, the suppliants, who are provided with bodily security by the inviolability of the place, exhibit in the soul, which God created proof against all that could subdue it, characteristics of freedom and high nobility.
ד׳
4[150] It must be so, for who could be so exceedingly unreasonable as to think that while places produce courage and free speaking, this does not extend to the most God-like thing existing, virtue, through which both places and everything else which participates in wisdom acquires sanctity?
ה׳
5[151] And indeed those who take refuge in sacrosanct localities and owe their security to the localities only, turn out to be in bondage to numberless other considerations, such as a wife seduced by gifts, children fallen into disgrace, betrayal in love matters. But those who take refuge in virtue, as in an indestructible and impregnable fortress, disregard the darts and arrows aimed at them by the passions which stalk them.
ו׳
6[152] Fortified by this power, a man may say freely and boldly, “While all others are the victims of chance circumstances, I can say with the tragic poet:
Myself I can obey and can command.
I measure all things by the rule of virtue.”
Myself I can obey and can command.
I measure all things by the rule of virtue.”
ז׳
7[153] Thus Bias of Priene is said to have retorted very disdainfully to the threats of Croesus, by bidding him eat onions, a phrase which means “go weep,” because eating onions sets the tears running.
ח׳
8[154] In this spirit the wise who hold that nothing is more royal than virtue, the captain whom they serve as soldiers throughout their lives, do not fear the orders of others whom they regard as subordinates. And so double-faced and shifty people are universally called servile and slavish.
ט׳
9[155] This same thought is well expressed in another couplet:
A slave’s head ne’er sits straight upon his shoulder
But always crooked on a twisted neck.
For the crooked, artificial, deceitful character is utterly ignoble, while the straight, simple and ingenuous, in which thoughts agree with words and words with thoughts, is noble.
A slave’s head ne’er sits straight upon his shoulder
But always crooked on a twisted neck.
For the crooked, artificial, deceitful character is utterly ignoble, while the straight, simple and ingenuous, in which thoughts agree with words and words with thoughts, is noble.
י׳
10[156] We may well deride the folly of those who think that when they are released from the ownership of their masters they become free. Servants, indeed, they are no longer now that they have been dismissed, but slaves they are and of the vilest kind, not to men, which would not be so grievous, but to the least reputable of inanimate things, to strong drink, to pot-herbs, to baked meats and all the other preparations made by the elaborate skill of cooks and confectioners, to afflict the miserable belly.
י״א
11[157] Thus Diogenes the cynic, seeing one of the so-called freedmen pluming himself, while many heartily congratulated him, marvelled at the absence of reason and discernment. “A man might as well,” he said, “proclaim that one of his servants became from this day a grammarian, a geometrician, or musician, when he has no idea whatever of the art.” For as the proclamation cannot make them men of knowledge, so neither can it make them free, for that is a state of blessedness. It can only make them no longer servants.