How the Young Man Should Study Poetry (10-14)

But, just as amid the luxuriant foliage and branches of a vine the fruit is often hidden and unnoticed from being in the shadow, so also amid the poetic diction and the tales that hang clustered about, much that is helpful and profitable escapes a young man. This, however, ought not to happen to him, nor should he allow his attention to be diverted from the facts, but he should cling especially close to those that lead toward virtue and have the power to mould character. In which regard it may not be a bad thing to treat this topic briefly, touching summarily the principal points, but leaving any extended and constructive treatment, and long list of examples, to those who write more for display. In the first place, then, as the young man takes note of good and bad characters and personages, let him pay attention to the lines and the actions which the poet assigns to them as respectively befitting. For example, Achilles says to Agamemnon, although he speaks with anger:

Never a prize like yours is mine whene’er the Achaeans Capture and sack some goodly and populous town of the Trojans.[*]

But Thersites in reviling the same man says:

Full of bronze are your quarters, and many, too, are the women, Chosen from all the captives for you, and these we Achaeans Give to you first of all whenever we capture a city.[*]

And on another occasion Achilles says,

If perchance Zeus ever Grants to us that we plunder Troy, the well-walled city,[*]

but Thersites,

One that I or another Achaean may bring in as captive.[*]

At another time, in the Inspection, when Agamemnon upbraided Diomede, the latter made no answer,

Showing respect for the stern rebuke of a king so respected.[*]

But Sthenelus, a man of no account, says:

Son of Atreus, speak not to deceive, knowing how to speak clearly; We can avow ourselves to be better far than our fathers.[*]

A difference of this sort then, if not overlooked, will teach the young man to regard modesty and moderation as a mark of refinement, but to be on his guard against boasting and self-assertion as a mark of meanness. It is useful to note also the behaviour of Agamemnon in this case; for Sthenelus he passed by without a word, but Odysseus he did not disregard, but made answer and addressed him,

When he saw he was wroth, and tried to retract his saying.[*]

For to defend one’s actions to everybody smacks of servility, not of dignity, while to despise everybody is arrogant and foolish. And most excellently does Diomede in the battle hold his peace, although upbraided by the king, but after the battle he uses plain speech to him:

First let me say that you ’mid the Danaans slighted my prowess[*]

It is well, too, not to miss a difference that exists between a man of sense and a seer who courts popularity. For example, Calchas [*] had no regard to the occasion, and made nothing of accusing the king before the multitude, alleging that he had

brought the pestilence upon them; but Nestor, though anxious to put in a word for the reconciliation with Achilles, yet, in order that he may not seem to discredit Agamemnon with the multitude as having made a mistake and indulged in anger, says,

Give a feast for the elders; ’tis fitting and not unbefitting; Then, when many are gathered, whoever shall offer best counsel Him you will follow,[*]

and after the dinner he sends forth the envoys. For this was the way to amend an error; the other was arraignment and foul abuse.

Moreover, the difference between the two peoples should be observed, their behaviour being as follows: the Trojans advance with shouting and confidence, but the Achaeans

Silently, fearing their captains.[*]

For to fear one’s commanders when at close quarters with the enemy is a sign of bravery and of obedience to authority as well. Wherefore Plato [*] tries to establish the habit of fearing blame and disgrace more than toils and dangers, and Cato [*] used to say that he liked people that blushed better than those that blanched.

There is also in the promises of the heroes a special character. For Dolon promises:

Straight to the midst of their host shall I go till I come to the vessel Which Agamemnon commands.[*]

Diomede, [*] however, promises nothing, but says that he should be less frightened if he were sent in company with another man. Prudence, then, is characteristic of a Greek and of a man of refinement, while presumption is barbaric and cheap: the one should be emulated and the other detested. And it is not unprofitable to consider how the Trojans and Hector were affected, at the time when Ajax was about to engage with him i single combat. Once when a boxer at the Isthmian games was struck in the face, and a clamour arose, Aeschylus [*] said, What a thing is training. The onlookers cry out; it is the man who is struck who says nothing. In like manner, when the poet says [*] that when Ajax appeared resplendent in his armour, the Greeks rejoiced at seeing him, whereas

Dreadful trembling seized on the limbs of every Trojan; Even Hector himself felt his heart beat quick in his bosom,

who could fail to admire the difference? For the heart of the man who is facing the danger only throbs, as though indeed he were simply going to wrestle or run a race, while the onlookers tremble and shiver in their whole bodies through loyalty and fear for their king. Here, too, one should carefully consider the difference between the very valiant man and the craven. For Thersites

Hateful was most of all to Achilles as well as Odysseus,Ibid. ii. 220.

while Ajax was always friendly to Achilles, and says to Hector regarding him—

Now alone from one man alone shall you learn quite clearly What sort of men with us are the Danaans’ chieftains Even after the smiter of men, lion-hearted Achilles.[*]

This is the compliment paid to Achilles, but these succeeding lines in behalf of all are put in such a way as to be useful:

Yet are we of such sort as are ready to face you, Yea, and many of us,[*]

thereby declaring himself not the only man or the best, but only one among many equally capable of offering defence.

This is enough on the subject of differences, unless perhaps we desire to add, that of the Trojans many were taken alive, but none of the Achaeans; and that of the Trojans some fell down at the feet of the enemy, as did Adrastus,[*] the sons [*] of Antimachus, Lycaon,[*] and Hector [*] himself begging Achilles for burial, but of the Achaeans none, because of their conviction that it is a trait of barbarian peoples to make supplication and to fall at the enemy’s feet in combat, but of Greeks to conquer or to die fighting.

Now just as in pasturage the bee seeks the flower, the goat the tender shoot, the swine the root, and other animals the seed and the fruit, so in the reading of poetry one person culls the flowers of the story, another rivets his attention upon the beauty of the diction and the arrangement of the words, as Aristophanes [*] says of Euripides,

I use the rounded neatness of his speech;

but as for those who are concerned with what is said as being useful for character (and it is to these that our present discourse is directed), let us remind them how strange it is if the lover of fables does not fail to observe the novel and unusual points in the story, and the student of language does not allow faultless and elegant forms of expression to escape him, whereas he that affects what is honourable and good, who takes up poetry not for amusement but for education, should give but a slack and careless hearing to utterances that look toward manliness or sobriety or uprightness, such, for example, as the following:

Son of Tydeus, what has made us forget our swift prowess? Hither, stand, my friend, by me. Disgrace will befall us If yon Hector, gleaming-helmed, shall capture our vessels.[*]

For to observe that the most wise and prudent man, when he is in danger of being destroyed and lost, together with the whole host, fears shame and disapprobation, but not death, will make the young man keenly alive to the moral virtues. And by the line,

Glad was Athena because of the man that was prudent and honest,[*]

the poet permits us to draw a similar conclusion in that he represents the goddess as taking delight, not in some rich man or in one who is physically handsome or strong, but in one who is wise and honest. And again when she says that she does not overlook Odysseus, much less desert him,

Since he is courteous and clever of mind and prudent,[*]

her words indicate that the only one of our attributes that is dear to the gods and divine is a virtuous mind, if it be true that it is the nature of like to delight in like.

Since it seems to be, and really is, a great thing to master one’s anger, and since a greater thing is the exercise of precaution and forethought so as not to become involved in anger or to be made captive by

it, we must make a point of indicating to our young readers such matters as this: that Achilles, being not tolerant or mild in temper, bids Priam in these words to be quiet and not to exasperate him:

Anger me now no more, old man (to ransom your Hector I myself am disposed; from Zeus has come such a message), Lest, old man, even here ’neath my roof I leave you not scatheless Suppliant though you are, and sin against Zeus’s commandments,[*]

and having washed and shrouded the body of Hector, he places it with his own hands on the wagon before its disfigurement was seen by the father,

Lest with heart so distressed he fail to master his anger, Seeing his son, and Achilles’ heart be stirred with resentment, So that he slay him there, and sin against Zeus’s commandments.[*]

For it is mark of a wondrous foresight for a man whose hold on his temper is uncertain, who is naturally rough and quick-tempered, not to be blind to his own weakness, but to exercise caution, and to be on his guard against possible grounds for anger, and to forestall them by reason long beforehand, so that he may not even inadvertently become involved in such emotions. After the same manner should he that is fond of wine be on his guard against drunkenness, and he that is amorous against love. So did Agesilaus,[*] who would not submit to being kissed by the handsome boy who approached him, so did Cyrus,[*] who durst not even to look at Pantheia; but the uneducated, on the contrary, gather fuel to kindle their passions, casting themselves headlong into those wherein they are weakest and least sure of themselves. Yet Odysseus not only restrains himself when enraged, but perceiving from some words of Telemachus that he too is angry and filled with hatred of the wicked, labours to mitigate his feelings and prepares him well beforehand to keep quiet and restrain himself, bidding him,

Even if they within my own house shall dishonour me sorely, Let your heart within you endure all the wrongs that I suffer: Though through the house they should drag me out by the feet to the open, Yea, or with missiles smite me, still you must patient behold it.[*]

For just as drivers do not curb their horses during the race, but before the race, so with those persons who are quick-tempered and hard to hold back when dangers threaten, we first gain control over them by reasoning, and make them ready beforehand, and then lead them into the strife.

While it is also necessary not to pass over the words carelessly, yet one should eschew the puerility of Cleanthes; for there are times when he uses a mock seriousness in pretending to interpret the words,

Father Zeus, enthroned on Ida,[*]

and

Zeus, lord of Dodona,

bidding us in the latter case to read the last two words as one [*] (taking the word lord as the preposition up) as though the vapour exhaled from the earth were updonative because of its being rendered up! And Chrysippus also is often quite petty, although he does not indulge in jesting, but wrests the words ingeniously, yet without carrying conviction, as when he would force the phrase wide-seeing son of Cronos [*] to signify clever in conversation, that is to say, with a widespread power of speech.

It is better, however, to turn these matters over to the grammarians, and to hold fast rather to those in which is to be found both usefulness and probability, such as

Nor does my heart so bid me, for I have learned to be valiant,[*]

and

For towards all he understood the way to be gentle.[*]

For by declaring that bravery is a thing to be learned, and by expressing the belief that friendly and gracious intercourse with others proceeds from understanding, and is in keeping with reason, the poet urges us not to neglect our own selves, but to learn what is good, and to give heed to our teachers, intimating that both boorishness and cowardice are but ignorance and defects of learning. With this agrees very well what he says regarding Zeus and Poseidon:

Both, indeed, were of one descent and of the same birthplace, Yet was Zeus the earlier born and his knowledge was wider.[*]

For he declares understanding to be a most divine and kingly thing, to which he ascribes the very great superiority of Zeus, inasmuch as he believes that all the other virtues follow upon this one.

At the same time, the young man must get the habit of perusing with a mind wide awake such sayings as these:

Falsehood he will not utter because he is very prudent,[*] and

What an act Is this, Antilochus, prudent aforetime! You have put my skill to disgrace and hindered my horses,[*]

and

Glaucus, what cause has a man like you for words so disdainful ? Truly I thought, my friend, that in sense you excelled all the others,[*]

the implication being that men of sense do not lie or contend unfairly in games, or make unwarranted accusations against other people. And from the poet’s saying [*] that Pandarus was persuaded because of his want of sense to bring to naught the sworn agreement, he clearly shows his opinion that the man of sense would not do wrong. It is also possible to give similar intimations in regard to self-control, by directing the young man’s attention to statements like these:

Mad for him was Proetus’ royal wife Anteia Lusting to make him her lover in secret, but could not persuade him, Since the wise Bellerophon thought more of virtue,[*]

and She at the first would not consent to a deed so unseemly, Royal Clytemnestra, since her thoughts were for virtue.[*] In these lines the poet attributes to understanding the cause of self-control; and in his exhortations to battle he says on the several occasions:

Shame, men of Lycia, whither now flee ye ? Now be ye valiant,[*]

and

But let all your minds be imbued with Shame and resentment, for now, as you see, great strife has arisen,[*]

and thereby he appears to represent the men of self-control as brave because of their being ashamed of disgrace, and as able to overcome pleasures and to undergo dangerous adventures. Timotheus [*] also adopted this point of view, when in his Persians he urged the Greeks, not infelicitously, to have

Respect for shame that helps the brave in war;

and Aeschylus [*] sets it down as a point of good sense not to be puffed up with fame, nor to be excited and elated by popular praise, when he writes of Amphiaraus,

His wish is not to seem, but be, the best, Reaping the deep-sown furrow of his mind In which all goodly counsels have their root.

For to take pride in oneself and in one’s state of mind when it is altogether good, marks the man of good sense; and since everything may be referred to understanding, it follows that every form of virtue is added unto him from reason and instruction.

Now the bee, in accordance with nature’s laws, discovers amid the most pungent flowers and the roughest thorns the smoothest and most palatable honey; so children, if they be rightly nurtured amid poetry, will in some way or other learn to draw some wholesome and profitable doctrine even from passages that are suspect of what is base and improper. For example, Agamemnon is suspected of having, for a bribe, released from service in the army the rich man who made him a present of the mare Aetha,

Gift so he fare not with him to Troy where the wind never ceaseth, But enjoy himself at home; for wealth in abundance Zeus had bestowed upon him.[*]

But, as Aristotle [*] observes, he did quite right in preferring a good mare to a man of that type. For a coward, and a weakling, made dissolute by wealth and soft living, is not, I swear, worth a dog or even an ass. Again, it appears most shameful in Thetis [*] when she incites her son to pleasures and reminds him of love. But even there we must contrast Achilles’ mastery of himself, that although he is in love with Briseis, who has come back to him, and although he knows that the end of his life is near, yet he does not make haste to enjoy love’s pleasures, nor, like most men, mourn for his friend by inactivity and omission of his duties, but as he refrains from such pleasures because of his grief, so he bestirs himself in the business of his command. Again, Archilochus cannot be commended, because while grieving over his sister’s husband, who was lost at sea, he is minded to fight against his grief by means of wine and amusement; he has, however, alleged a cause that has some appearance of reason,

By my tears I shall not cure it, nor worse make it By pursuing joys, yea, and festivities.[*]

For if he thought that he should not make matters worse by pursuing joys, yea, and festivities, how shall our present condition be any the worse if we engage in the study of philosophy or take part in public life, if we go out to the market-place or down to the Academy, or if we pursue our farming? Wherefore the corrected versions which Cleanthes and Antisthenes employed are themselves not without value. Antisthenes, observing that the Athenians had raised an uproar in the theatre at the line,

What’s shameful if its doer think not so? [*]

at once interpolated,

A shame’s a shame, though one think so or no

and Cleanthes, taking the lines about riches, Give to your friends, and when your body’s ill, Save it by spending,[*] rewrote them in this manner,

To harlots give, and when your body’s ill Waste it by spending.

And Zeno in amending the lines of Sophocles,

Whoever comes to traffic with a king To him is slave however free he come,[*]

rewrote it thus:

Is not a slave if only free he come,

by the word free as he now uses it designating the man who is fearless, high-minded, and unhumbled. What, then, is to hinder us also from encouraging the young to take the better course by means of similar rejoinders, dealing with the citations something like this:

Most enviable is the lot of him The shaft of whose desire hits what he would.[*]

Not so, will be our retort, but

The shaft of whose desire hits what is good.

For to gain and achieve one’s wish, if what one wishes is not right, is pitiable and unenviable. Again,

Not for good and no ill came thy life from thy sire, Agamemnon, but joy Thou shalt find interwoven with grief.[*]

No, indeed, we shall say, but you must find joy and not grief if your lot be but moderate, since

Not for good and no ill came thy life from thy sire, Agamemnon;

and:

Alas, from God this evil comes to men, When, knowing what is good, one does it not.[*]

No, rather is it bestial, we reply, and irrational and pitiable that a man who knows the better should be led astray by the worse as a result of a weak will and soft living.

And again:

’Tis character persuades, and not the speech.[*]

No, rather it is both character and speech, or character by means of speech, just as a horseman uses a bridle, or a helmsman uses a rudder, since virtue has no instrument so humane or so akin to itself as speech. And:

To women more than men is he inclined? Where there is beauty, either suits him best.[*]

But it were better to say

Where there is virtue, either suits him best,

of a truth, and there is no difference in his inclination; but the man who is influenced by pleasure or outward beauty to shift his course hither and thither is incompetent and inconstant. Again:

God’s doings make the wise to feel afraid.[*]

Not so by any means, but

God’s doings make the wise to feel assured,

but they do make the silly and foolish and ungrateful to feel afraid, because such persons suspect and fear the power which is the cause and beginning of every good thing, as though it did harm. Such then is the system of amendment.

Chrysippus has rightly indicated how the poet’s statements can be given a wider application, saying that what is serviceable should be taken over and made to apply to like situations. For when Hesiod [*] says,

Nor would even an ox disappear were there not a bad neighbour,

he says the same thing also about a dog and about an ass and about all things which in a similar way can disappear. And again when Euripides [*] says,

What man who recks not death can be a slave?

we must understand that he makes the same statement also about trouble and disease. For, as physicians who have learnt the efficacy of a drug adapted to one malady take it over and use it for every similar malady, so also when a statement has a general and universal value, we ought not to suffer it to be fixed upon one matter alone, but we ought to apply it to all the like, and inure the young men to see its general value, and quickly to carry over what is appropriate, and by many examples to give themselves training and practice in keen appreciation; so that when Menander says,

Blest is the man who has both wealth and sense,[*]

they may think of the statement as holding good also about repute and leadership and facility in speaking; and so also that when they hear the rebuke which was administered by Odysseus to Achilles as he sat among the maidens in Scyrus,

Dost thou, to dim the glory of thy race, Card wool, son of the noblest man in Greece? [*]

they may imagine it to be addressed also to the profligate and the avaricious and the heedless and the ill-bred, as, for example,

Dost drink, son of the noblest man in Greece,

or gamble, or follow quail-fighting, [*] or petty trading, or the exacting of usury, without a thought of what is magnanimous or worthy of your noble parentage?

Speak not of Wealth. I can’t admire a god Whose ready favour basest men secure.[*]

Therefore speak not of repute, either, or of personal beauty, or the general’s cloak, or the priestly crown, to all which we see the worst of men attaining.

For ugly is the brood of cowardice,[*]

and the same we may also aver of licentiousness, superstition, envy, and all the other pestilent disorders. Most excellently has Homer said

Paris, poor wretch, excelling in looks,[*]

and

Hector, excelling in looks [*]

(for he declares the man deserving of censure and reproach who is endowed with no good quality better than personal comeliness), and this we must make to apply to similar cases, thereby curtailing the pride of those who plume themselves on things of no worth, and teaching the young to regard as a disgrace and reproach such phrases as excelling in wealth and excelling in dinners and excelling in children or oxen, and in fact even the use of the word excelling in such a connexion. For we ought to aim at the pre-eminence which comes from noble qualities, and we should strive to be first in matters of first importance, and to be great in the greatest: but the repute which comes from small and petty things is disreputable and paltry.

This illustration at once reminds us to consider carefully instances of censure and commendation, particularly in Homer’s poems. For he gives us expressly to understand that bodily and adventitious

characteristics are unworthy of serious attention. For, to begin with, in their greetings and salutations, they do not call one another handsome or rich or strong, but they employ such fair words as these—

Heaven-sprung son of Laertes, Odysseus of many devices,[*]

and

Hector, son of Priam, peer of Zeus in counsel,[*]

and

Son of Peleus, Achilles, great glory to the Achaeans,[*]

and

Noble son of Menoetius, in whom my soul finds pleasure.[*]

In the second place they reproach without touching at all upon bodily characteristics, but they direct their censure to faults: Drunken sot, with eyes of a dog and the wild deer’s courage,[*] and

Ajax, excelling at wrangling, ill advised,[*]

and

Why, Idomeneus do you brag so soon? Unfitting Is it for you to be braggart,[*]

and Ajax, blundering boaster,[*] and finally Thersites is reproached [*] by Odysseus, not as lame or bald or hunchbacked, but as indiscreet in his language, while on the other hand the mother of Hephaestus affectionately drew an epithet from his lameness when she addressed him thus:

Up with you, club-foot, my child![*]

Thus Homer ridicules those who feel ashamed of lameness or blindness, in that he does not regard as blameworthy that which is not shameful, or as shameful that which is brought about, not through our own acts, but by fortune.

Plainly, then, two great advantages accrue to those who accustom themselves carefully to peruse works of poetry: the first is conducive to moderation, that we do not odiously and foolishly reproach anybody with his fortune; while the second is conducive to magnanimity, that when we ourselves have met with chances and changes we be not humiliated or even disturbed, but bear gently with scoffings and revilings and ridicule, having especially before us the words of Philemon:

There’s naught more pleasing or in better taste Than having strength to bear when men revile.[*]

But if anybody is plainly in need of reprehension, we should reprehend his faults and his giving way to emotion, after the fashion in which Adrastus of the tragedy, when Alcmaeon said to him,

You are the kin of her who slew her spouse,[*]

replied

And you have murdered her who gave you birth.[*]

For just as those who scourge the clothes do not touch the body,[*] so those who scoff at misfortune or low birth, do but vainly and foolishly assail externals, never touching the soul or even such matters as really need correction and stinging reproof.

Moreover, just as in what we have said above we felt that by setting against cheap and harmful poems the sayings and maxims of statesmen and men of repute, we were inducing a revolt and revulsion of faith from such poetry, so whenever we find any edifying sentiment neatly expressed in the poets we ought to foster and amplify it by means of proofs and testimonies from the philosophers, at the same time crediting these with the discovery. For this is right and useful, and our faith gains an added strength and dignity whenever the doctrines of Pythagoras and of Plato are in agreement with what is spoken on the stage or sung to the lyre or studied at school, and when the precepts of Chilon and of Bias lead to the same conclusions as our children’s readings in poetry. Hence it is a duty to make a point of indicating that the lines

You, my child, have not the gift of arms in battle, Your concern must be for loving arms in wedlock,[*]

and

Seeing that Zeus is wroth if you fight with a man far better,[*]

do not differ from Know thyself, but have the same purport as this; and the lines,

Fools! They know not how much more than all a half is,[*]

and

Evil counsel is the worst for him who gives it[*]

are identical with the doctrines of Plato in the Gorgias [*] and the Republic [*] upon the principle that to do wrong is worse than to be wronged and to do evil is more injurious than to suffer evil. And on the words of Aeschylus, [*]

Fear not; great stress of pain is not for long,

we ought to remark that this is the oft repeated and much admired statement originating with Epicurus,[*] namely that great pains shortly spend their force, and long continued pains have no magnitude. Of these two ideas Aeschylus has perspicuously stated the one and the other is a corollary thereto; for if great and intense pain is not lasting, then that which does not last is not great or hard to endure. Take these lines of Thespis [*]:

You see that Zeus is first of gods in this, Not using lies or boast or silly laugh; With pleasure he alone is unconcerned.

What difference is there between this and the statement, for the Divine Being sits throned afar from pleasure and pain, as Plato [*] has put it? Consider what is said by Bacchylides [*]:

I shall assert that virtue hath the highest fame, But wealth with even wretched men is intimate,

and again by Euripides [*] to much the same effect:

There’s naught that I hold In a higher esteem Than a virtuous life; ’Twill ever be joined With those that are good.

and

Why seek vain possessions? Do ye think Virtue by wealth to compass? Wretched amid your comforts shall ye sit.[*]

Is not this a proof of what the philosophers say regarding wealth and external advantages, that without virtue they are useless and unprofitable for their owners?

This method of conjoining and reconciling such sentiments with the doctrines of philosophers brings the poet’s work out of the realm of myth and impersonation, and, moreover, invests with seriousness its helpful sayings. Besides, it opens and stimulates in advance the mind of the youth by the sayings in philosophy. For he comes to it thus not altogether without a foretaste of it, nor without having heard of it, nor indiscriminately stuffed with what he has heard always from his mother and nurse, and, I

dare say, from his father and his tutor as well, who all beatify and worship the rich, who shudder at death and pain, who regard virtue without money and repute as quite undesirable and a thing of naught. But when they hear the precepts of the philosophers, which go counter to such opinions, at first astonishment and confusion and amazement take hold of them, since they cannot accept or tolerate any such teaching, unless, just as if they were now to look upon the sun after having been in utter darkness, they have been made accustomed, in a reflected light, as it were, in which the dazzling rays of truth are softened by combining truth with fable, to face facts of this sort without being distressed, and not to try to get away from them.[*] For if they have previously heard or read in poetry such thoughts as these:

To mourn the babe for th’ ills to which he comes; But him that’s dead, and from his labours rests, To bear from home with joy and cheering words,[*]

and What needs have mortals save two things alone, Demeter’s grain and draught from water-jar?[*] and

O Tyranny, beloved of barbarous folk,[*]

and

And mortal men’s felicity Is gained by such of them as feel least grief,[*]

they are less confused and disquieted upon hearing at the lectures of the philosophers that Death is nothing to us, [*] and The wealth allowed by Nature is definitely limited, [*] and Happiness and blessedness do not consist in vast possessions or exalted occupations or offices or authority, but on impassivity, calmness, and a disposition of the soul that sets its limitations to accord with Nature. [*]

Wherefore, both because of these considerations and because of those already adduced, the young man has need of good pilotage in the matter of reading, to the end that, forestalled with schooling rather than prejudice, in a spirit of friendship and goodwill and familiarity, he may be convoyed by poetry into the realm of philosophy.