On the Peace (31-35)

For some have gone to such an extreme of folly as to hold the view that, while injustice is reprehensible, it is, nevertheless, profitable and advantageous in our lives day by day, and that, while justice is estimable, it is for all that disadvantageous and more capable of benefiting others than of helping those who practise it.[*]

They fail to see that nothing in the world can contribute so powerfully to material gain, to good repute, to right action, in a word, to happiness, as virtue and the qualities of virtue.[*] For it is by the good qualities which we have in our souls that we acquire also the other advantages of which we stand in need.[*] So that those who have no care for their own state of mind are unwittingly disparaging the means of attaining at the same time to greater wisdom and to greater well-being.

But I marvel if anyone thinks that those who practise piety and justice remain constant and steadfast in these virtues because they expect to be worse off than the wicked and not because they consider that both among gods and among men[*] they will have the advantage over others. I, for my part, am persuaded that they and they alone gain advantage in the true sense, while the others gain advantage only in the baser sense of that term.

For I observe that those who prefer the way of injustice, thinking it the greatest good fortune to seize something that belongs to others, are in like case with animals which are lured by a bait, at the first deriving pleasure from what they seize, but the moment after finding themselves in desperate straits, while those who live a life of piety and justice pass their days in security for the present and have sweeter hopes for all eternity.[*]

But if this is not wont to happen in all cases, nevertheless it does, for the most part, come out in this way. And it behoves intelligent men, since they cannot see clearly what will always be to their advantage, to show to the world that they prefer that which is generally beneficial. On the other hand, they are of all men most afflicted with unreason who concede that justice is a way of life more noble and more pleasing to the gods than injustice but at the same time believe that those who follow it will live in worse case than those who have chosen the way of evil.