He always advised his disciples not to postpone being good, as most people do, by setting themselves a limit in the form of a holiday or a festival, with the intention of beginning from that date to shun lies and do as they should; for he deemed that an inclination towards the higher life brooked no delay. He made no secret of his condemnation of the sort of philosophers who think it a course in virtue if. they train the young to enduré “full many pains and toils," Evidently a quotation: the source is unknown. the majority recommending cold baths, though some whip them, and still others, the more refined. of their sort, scrape ” the surface of their skin with a knife-blade.

It was his opinion that this hardness and insensibility should be created rather in the souls of men, and that he who elects to give the best possible education ought to have an eye to soul, to body, and to age and previous training, that he may not subject himself to criticism on the score of setting his pupils tasks beyond their strength. Indeed, he asserted that many die as a result of strains so unreasonable. I myself saw one student who, after a taste of the tribulations in that camp, had made off without a backward glance as soon as he heard true doctrine, and had come to Nigrinus: he was clearly the better for it.

At length leaving the philosophers, he recurred to the rest of mankind, and told about the uproar of the city, the crowding, the theatres, the races, the statues. of the drivers, the names of the horses, and the conversations in the streets about these matters. The craze for horses is really great, you know, and men with a name for earnestness have caught it in great numbers.

Next he touched upon another human comedy, played by the people who occupy themselves with life beyond the grave and with last wills, adding that sons of Rome speak the truth only once in their whole lives (meaning in their wills), in order that they may not reap the fruits of their truthfulness! A famous instance is the case of Petronius, who expressed his opinion of Nero in his will and made the emperor his executor. I could not help interrupting him with laughter when he said that they want to have their follies buried with them and to leave their stupidity on record, inasmuch as some of them leave instructions that clothing be burned with them which they prized in life, others that servants stay by their tombs, and here and there another that his gravestone be wreathed with flowers. They remain foolish even on their deathbeds.