On the Tilling of the Earth by Noah (151-155)

But the multitude of their other allies will cheerfully encounter the contest on behalf of these things. At first sight, indeed, it seems absurd to rely upon the energies or fortune of others; and especially when it is both an individual and a common danger, involving defeat, and slavery, and utter destruction, which hangs over men’s heads, who are able of themselves to encounter the toils and perils of war, and who are not hindered by any disease, or by old age, or by any other disaster. It is rather fitting that those, whom the danger chiefly concerns, should seize their arms and stand in the front battalions and hold their shields over their allies, fighting cheerfully and with a spirit which even courts dangers.

In the next place, will they not have displayed examples, not of treachery only, but of the greatest insensibility, if they allow others to fight in their cause, while they themselves are occupied about their domestic affairs? And shall others be willing to incur contests and dangers in the cause of their safety, which they are afraid to encounter for their own? And shall others cheerfully endure scarcity of provisions, and sleeping on the ground, and other hardships of body and soul, from their desire for victory, while they, covering their houses with stucco and nonsense, so much lifeless ornament, or gathering in their harvests from their fields, and celebrating the festival of the vintage, or coming into connection, now for the first time, with virgins who have long since been betrothed to them, and sleeping with them, as if it were the most opportune season for marriage, pass their time in such vanities?

It is a good thing, no doubt, to take care of one’s walls, to collect one’s revenues, to feast, to revel in wine, to contract marriages, to go courting the old and withered dames (as the proverb calls them); but these are the employments of peace, and to do all these things in the crisis of a war raging in all its freshness and vigour,

while neither father, nor brother, nor any relation or connection whatever shares the fatigues of the war; when this, I say, is the case, must we not say that universal cowardice has occupied the whole house? Oh, but you will say there are at all events myriads of relations who are fighting in their cause. Then, while they are encountering danger to their lives, must not those who are spending their

Again, they will say, but it is hard that others, without enduring any labour themselves, should reap the fruits of our labours. Which, then, is worst, that enemies should come into one’s inheritance while one is still alive, or that friends and relations should do so after one is dead? It is absurdity even to compare things which are so widely different;