On Drunkenness (21-25)

therefore, the contributions for the most excellent object are the desire of virtue, the imitation of good men, continued care, laborious practise, incessant and unwearied labours; the contributions for the opposite object are relaxation, indifference, luxury, effeminacy, and a complete desertion of what is right.

And we may see those who every day descend into the arena to contend in drinking much wine, and practising this quality every day, and striving to gain the victory in greediness and voracity, bringing their contributions as though they had some desirable object in view, and injuring themselves in every thing, in their property, and their bodies, and their souls; for by contributing their property they diminish their substance; and they break down and enervate the powers of their bodies by their luxurious way of life, and as for their souls, inundating them with immoderate food like a swollen torrent, they compel that to sink down to the lowest depth.

For the same manner all those, who bring contributions for the destruction of learning, injure the most important thing in them, namely, their mind, cutting off every thing that might save it—prudence, and temperance, and courage, and justice; on which account he seems to me himself to use a compound word, συμβολοϰοπω̃ν, for the more manifest manifestation of his meaning, because they who bring forward attempts at virtue as their offering and contribution, wound and lacerate, and cut to pieces, obedient and learning-loving souls to the extent of their utter destruction.

Therefore the wise Abraham is said to have returned again from the slaughter of Chedorlaomer, and of the kings who were with him. [*] And on the other hand, Amalek is said to have cut to pieces the rear of the company of the meditator of virtue, [*] in strict accordance with the truth of nature; for what is contrary to one is also hostile to the other, [*] [*]

But one may especially blame a man who contributes offerings on this account, because such an one has not only determined to do wrong, but also to co-operate with others in doing wrong, thinking fit in some things to be the leader himself, and in others to follow the leadership of others; so that, erring both by nature and through what he has learnt, he leaves himself no good hope of safety, and this, too, though the law has expressly said that one must "not follow a multitude to do evil;" [*]