On the Life of a Man occupied with Affairs of State, or on Joseph (81-85)

And of the cruelty and inhumanity of which gaolers are full there is no one who is ignorant. For they are both by nature pitiless, and also by constant practise they are made more and more brutal, and increase in ferocity day by day, never seeing, or saying, or doing any good thing, but committing only acts of violence and barbarity.

For as men who have very strongly knit bodies, when besides their natural strength they add to it the practise of wrestlers, become stronger still, and acquire an irresistible power and a surpassing perfection of body, so in the same manner when an untameable and implacable nature adds habit to its natural ferocity, it becomes inaccessible to, and immovable by any kind of pity or any single respectable or humane feeling.

And as those who associate with good men are improved in their disposition by such association, rejoicing in the pleasant and good persons with whom they are living; so also do they who are living with the wicked take the impression of their wicked ways; for habit is a very powerful thing to put a force upon nature, and to make it resemble itself:

now keepers of prisons live among thieves and robbers, and housebreakers, and men of insolence and violence, and murderers, and adulterers, and plunderers of temples, from every one of whom they contract some wickedness, and collect a sort of contribution: and from their

Nevertheless, even such a man as this was propitiated by the virtue of this young man, and not only gave him liberty and security, but even entrusted to him a share of authority over all the prisoners; so that in word, indeed, and as far as the title went, he continued to be the gaoler; but in reality he had made over all the active part of the work to the young man, in consequence of which conduct of his the prisoners were benefited in no slight degree.