things which appear extraordinary, such as Charon's mephitic cavern-.' 7 ebbings of the tide, hot springs or fiery eruptions. Nor yet, they go on to say. will the wise man live in solitude ; for he is naturally made for society and action. He will, however, submit to training to augment his powers of bodily endurance. And the wise man, they say, will offer prayers, and ask for good things from the gods : so Posidonius in the first book of his treatise On Duties, and Hecato in his third book On Paradoxes. Friendship, they declare, exists only between the wise and good, by reason of their likeness to one another. And by friendship they mean a common use of all that has to do with life, wherein we treat our friends as we should ourselves. They argue that a friend is worth having for his own sake and that it is a good thing to have many friends. But among the bad there is, they hold, no such thing as friendship, and thus no bad man has a friend. Another of their tenets is that the unwise are all mad, inasmuch as they are not wise but do what they do from that madness which is the equivalent of their folly. Furthermore, the wise man does all things well, just as we say that Ismenias plays all airs on the flute well. Also everything belongs to the wise. For the law, they say, has conferred upon them a perfect right to all things. It is true that certain things are said to belong to the bad, just as what lias been dishonestly acquired may be said, in one sense, to belong to the state, in another sense to those who are enjoving it. They hold that the virtues involve one another, and that the possessor of one is the possessor of all,
The Greek stands ready in the workroom; the English is served. Both faces will read together.
Hecato — a candidate entry Posidonius — a candidate entry
Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Volume II (Books VI-X), Diogenes Laertius — translated by R. D. Hicks, 1925
Apparatus shelf — Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, vol. II (R. D. Hicks translation, Loeb L185) · R. D. Hicks, Loeb Classical Library, London: William Heinemann / New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, MCMXXV (1925)
license: public-domain (US: published 1925, pre-1930 — the MCMXXV title page verified from the scan itself; only the English rectos are served, Hicks's translation)