(7) Hence it is more difficult to bear prosperity in a becoming manner than adversity. For all men when they continue in adversity, are seen for the most part to be moderate and orderly in their manners; but in prosperity they are brave, magnificent, and magnanimous [when they bear it in a becoming manner]. For adversity has the power of contracting and depressing the soul; but prosperity, on the contrary, elevates and expands it. Hence all those that are unfortunate, are in their manners cautious and prudent; but those that are fortunate are insolent and confident. But the boundary of prosperity, is that which a good man would deliberately choose to co-operate with him in his own proper actions; just as the [proper] magnitude of a ship, and the [proper] magnitude of a rudder, are such as will enable a good pilot to sail over a great extent of sea, and to accomplish a great voyage. An excess of prosperity, however, is not naturally adapted to be vanquished by, but to vanquish the soul. For as a [very] splendid light causes an obscuration of sight in the eyes; thus also excessive prosperity darkens the intellect of the soul. And thus much may suffice concerning prosperity.

(6) Since therefore felicity is the use of virtue in prosperity, we must speak concerning virtue and prosperity, and in the first place concerning prosperity. For of goods, some indeed do not admit of excess, and this is the case with virtue. For there is not any virtue which is excessive, nor any worthy man who is beyond measure good. For virtue has the fit and becoming for a rule, and is the habit of the decorous in practical concerns. But prosperity receives excess and diminution. And when it is excessive indeed, it generates certain vices, and removes a man from his natural habit; so that he frequently through this opposes the constitution of virtue. And this is not only the case with prosperity, but many other causes likewise may effect the same thing.

For it is by no means proper to wonder, that some of those who play on the pipe should be arrogant men, who, bidding farewell to truth, ensnare by a certain false imagination those who are unskilled in music; and to disbelieve that a thing of this kind does not take place in virtue. For the more venerable a thing is, so much the more numerous are those that pretend to the possession of it. For there are many things which distort the habit and form of virtue; some of which are insidious arts and affectation; others are kindred physical passions, which sometimes produce an indecorum contrary to the true disposition [of virtue.] This also is effected through manners in which men have been nurtured for a long time; and it not unfrequently happens that it is produced through youth or old age, and through prosperity or adversity; and by other very numerous ways.

Hence, we ought never to wonder, if sometimes a distorted judgment is formed of all things, the true disposition being changed. Thus we see that the most excellent carpenter frequently errs in the works which are the subjects of his art; and this is also the case with the general, the pilot, the painter, and in short, with all artists. And yet at the same time we do not deprive them of the habit which they possess. For as we do not rank among bad men him who at certain times acts intemperately, or unjustly, or timidly; so neither do we place him in the class of good men, who does something right in things pertaining to temperance, or justice, or fortitude.

But it must be said that the conduct of bad men in things of this kind is casually right, and that good men [sometimes] err. A true judgment however [in these instances] is to be formed, not by looking to a certain occasion, or to a certain extent of time, but to the whole of life. But as indigence and excess are injurious to the body, yet excess and what are called superfluities, are naturally adapted to produce greater diseases [than those caused by indigence]; thus also prosperity or adversity injure the soul, when they unseasonably happen; yet that which is called by all men prosperity, is naturally adapted to produce greater diseases [than adversity], since it intoxicates like wine the reasoning power of good men.

(589) Is not the noble that which subjects the beast to the man, or rather to the god in man; and the ignoble that which subjects the man to the beast?’ He can hardly avoid saying Yes—can he now? Not if he has any regard for my opinion. But, if he agree so far, we may ask him to answer another question: ‘Then how would a man profit if he received gold and silver on the condition that he was to enslave the noblest part of him to the worst? Who can imagine that a man who sold his son or daughter into slavery for money, especially if he sold them into the hands of fierce and evil men, would be the gainer, however large might be the sum which he received? And will any one say that he is not a miserable caitiff who remorselessly sells his own divine being to that which is most godless and detestable? Eriphyle took the necklace as the price of her husband’s life, but he is taking a bribe in order to compass a worse ruin.’ Yes, said Glaucon, far worse—I will answer for him. Has not the intemperate been censured of old, because in him the huge multiform monster is allowed to be too much at large? Clearly. And men are blamed for pride and bad temper when the

(363) upon them the punishments which Glaucon described as the portion of the just who are reputed to be unjust; nothing else does their invention supply. Such is their manner of praising the one and censuring the other. Once more, Socrates, I will ask you to consider another way of speaking about justice and injustice, which is not confined to the poets, but is found in prose writers. The universal voice of mankind is always declaring that justice and virtue are honourable, but grievous and toilsome; and that the pleasures of vice and injustice are easy of attainment, and are only censured by law and opinion. They say also that honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty; and they are quite ready to call wicked men happy, and to honour them both in public and private when they are rich or in any other way influential, while they despise and overlook those who may be weak and poor, even though acknowledging them to be better than the others. But most extraordinary of all is their mode of speaking about virtue and the gods: they say that the gods apportion calamity and misery to many good men, and good and happiness to the wicked. And mendicant prophets go to rich men’s doors and persuade them that they have a power committed to them by the gods of making an atonement for a man’s own or his ancestor’s

(2) But those who have not are poor, that is, those who possess nothing, and yet they desire something. And they lead astray those who, through them, have become like those who possess the truth of their freedom, so as to bring us under a yoke and constraint of care and fear. This person is in slavery. And one who is brought by constraint of force and threat has been guarded by god. But the entire nobility of the fatherhood is not guarded, since he guards what is his own by himself, without word and constraint. He is united with his will, he who belongs only to the thought of the fatherhood, to make it perfect and ineffable through the living water, to be with you mutually in wisdom, not only in word of hearing but in deed and fulfilled word. For the perfect ones are worthy to be established in this way and to be united with me, in order that they may not share in any enmity, in a good friendship. I accomplish everything through the good one, for this is the union of the truth, that they should have no adversary. But everyone who brings division—and such a one will learn no wisdom at all, because he brings division and is not a friend—is hostile to them all. But one who lives in harmony and friendship of brotherly love, naturally and not artificially, completely and not partially, this person is truly the desire of the father. This is the universal one and perfect love.

(1) I say that virtue will be found sufficient to the avoidance of infelicity, and vice to the non-attainment of felicity, if we judiciously consider the habits [by which these are produced]. For it is necessary that the bad man should always be miserable; whether he is in affluence, for he employs it badly; or whether he is in penury; just as the blind man, whether he has light, and the most splendid visible object before him, or whether he is in the dark [is always necessarily without sight]. But the good man is not always happy; for felicity does not consist in the possession, but in the use of virtue. For neither does he who has sight always see; for he will not see, if he is without light.

Life, however, is divided into two paths; one of which is more arduous, and in which the patient Ulysses walked; but the other is more free from molestation, and is that in which Nestor proceeded. I say therefore that virtue desires the latter, but is able to proceed in the former of these paths. The nature however of felicity proclaims it to be a desirable and stable life, because it gives perfection to the decision of the soul. Hence the virtuous man who does not obtain such a life as this, is not indeed happy, nor yet entirely miserable. No one therefore will dare to say that the good man should be exempt from disease, and pain, and sorrow. For as we leave certain painful things to the body, so likewise we must permit them to be present with the soul.

The sorrows, however, of fools are most irrational; but those of wise men proceed only as far as reason, which gives limitation to things, permits. Moreover, the boast of apathy dissolves the generosity of virtue, when it opposes itself to things of an indifferent nature, and not to evils such as death, and pain, and poverty. For things which are not evils are easily vanquished. We should therefore exercise ourselves in the mediocrity of the passions, as we shall then equally avoid insensibility, and too much passivity, and shall not speak higher of our nature than we ought.

(3) Because also insolence, luxury, and a contempt of the laws, frequently impel men to injustice, on this account he daily exhorted his disciples to give assistance to law, and to be hostile to illegality. Hence he made such a division as the following: that what is called luxury, is the first evil that usually glides into houses and cities; that the second is insolence; and the third destruction. That hence luxury should by all possible means be excluded and expelled [from every house and city,] and that men should be accustomed from their birth to a temperate and manly life. He farther added, that it is requisite to be purified from all malediction, whether it be that which is lamentable, or that which excites hostility, and whether it be of a reviling, or insolent, or scurrilous nature.

(552) Yes, that is an evil which also first begins in this State. The evil is certainly not prevented there; for oligarchies have both the extremes of great wealth and utter poverty. True. But think again: In his wealthy days, while he was spending his money, was a man of this sort a whit more good to the State for the purposes of citizenship? Or did he only seem to be a member of the ruling body, although in truth he was neither ruler nor subject, but just a spendthrift? As you say, he seemed to be a ruler, but was only a spendthrift. May we not say that this is the drone in the house who is like the drone in the honeycomb, and that the one is the plague of the city as the other is of the hive? Just so, Socrates. And God has made the flying drones, Adeimantus, all without stings, whereas of the walking drones he has made some without stings but others have dreadful stings; of the stingless class are those who in their old age end as paupers; of the stingers come all the criminal class, as they are termed. Most true, he said. Clearly then, whenever you see paupers in a State, somewhere in that neighbourhood there are hidden away thieves, and cut-purses and robbers of temples, and all sorts of malefactors. Clearly. Well, I said, and in oligarchical States do you not find paupers? Yes, he said; nearly everybody is a pauper who is not a ruler.

(330) which is a characteristic rather of those who have inherited their fortunes than of those who have acquired them; the makers of fortunes have a second love of money as a creation of their own, resembling the affection of authors for their own poems, or of parents for their children, besides that natural love of it for the sake of use and profit which is common to them and all men. And hence they are very bad company, for they can talk about nothing but the praises of wealth. That is true, he said. Yes, that is very true, but may I ask another question?—What do you consider to be the greatest blessing which you have reaped from your wealth? One, he said, of which I could not expect easily to convince others. For let me tell you, Socrates, that when a man thinks himself to be near death, fears and cares enter into his mind which he never had before; the tales of a world below and the punishment which is exacted there of deeds done here were once a laughing matter to him, but now he is tormented with the thought that they may be true: either from the weakness of age, or because he is now drawing nearer to that other place, he has a clearer view of these things; suspicions and alarms crowd thickly upon him, and he begins to reflect and consider what wrongs he has done to others. And when he finds that the sum of his transgressions is great he will many a time like a child start up in his sleep for fear, and he is filled with dark forebodings. But

(5) And the felicity, indeed, and life of God are most excellent; but the felicity of man consists of science, and virtue, and in the third place of prosperity corporalized. But I mean by science, the wisdom pertaining to things divine and demoniacal; and by prudence, the wisdom pertaining to human concerns, and the affairs of life. For it is requisite to call the virtues which employ reasonings and demonstrations, sciences. But it is fit to denominate virtue ethical, and the best habit of the irrational part of the soul, according to which we are said to possess certain qualities pertaining to manners; viz. by which we are called liberal, just, and temperate. But it is requisite to call prosperity, the preter-rational presence of goods, [or a supply of goods without the assistance of reason,] and which is not effected on account of it.

Since therefore virtue and science are in our power, but prosperity is not; and since also felicity consists in the contemplation and performance of things [truly] beautiful; but contemplations and actions, when they are not prosperous, are attended with ministrant offices and necessity, but when they proceed in the right path, produce delight and felicity; and these things are effected in prosperity;—this being the case, it is evident that felicity is nothing else than the use of virtue in prosperity . Hence the good man is disposed with respect to prosperity, in the same manner as he who has an excellent and robust body. For such a one is able to endure heat and cold, to raise a great burden, and to sustain easily many other molestations.

(553) passion headforemost from his bosom’s throne; humbled by poverty he takes to money-making and by mean and miserly savings and hard work gets a fortune together. Is not such an one likely to seat the concupiscent and covetous element on the vacant throne and to suffer it to play the great king within him, girt with tiara and chain and scimitar? Most true, he replied. And when he has made reason and spirit sit down on the ground obediently on either side of their sovereign, and taught them to know their place, he compels the one to think only of how lesser sums may be turned into larger ones, and will not allow the other to worship and admire anything but riches and rich men, or to be ambitious of anything so much as the acquisition of wealth and the means of acquiring it. Of all changes, he said, there is none so speedy or so sure as the conversion of the ambitious youth into the avaricious one. And the avaricious, I said, is the oligarchical youth? Yes, he said; at any rate the individual out of whom he came is like the State out of which oligarchy came. Let us then consider whether there is any likeness between them.

(2) Now, however, many previously conceiving in imagination, that all that is present with, and imparted to them by nature and fortune, is better than it is, and not thinking it to be such as it is in reality, but such as it is able to become when it has arrived at the summit of excellence, they burden the soul with many great, nefarious, and stupid evils, when they are suddenly deprived of [these evanescent goods]. And thus it happens to them that they lead a most bitter and miserable life. But this takes place in the loss of riches, or the death of friends or children, or in the privation of certain other things, which are conceived by them to be most honorable possessions.

Afterwards, weeping and lamenting, they assert of themselves, that they alone are most unfortunate and miserable, not remembering that these things have happened, and even now happen, to many others; nor are they able to understand the life of those that are now in existence, and of those that have lived in former times, nor to see in what great calamities and waves of evils, many of the present time are, and of the past have been involved. Considering with ourselves therefore, that many having lost their property, have afterwards on account of this very loss been saved, since hereafter they might either have fallen into the hands of robbers, or into the power of a tyrant; that many also who have loved certain persons, and have been benevolently disposed towards them in the extreme, have afterwards greatly hated them;—considering all these things, which have been delivered to us by history, and likewise learning that many have been destroyed by their children, and by those that they have most dearly loved; and comparing our own life with that of those who have been more unhappy than we have been, and taking into account human casualties [in general] and not only such as happen to ourselves, we shall pass through life with greater tranquillity.

For it is not lawful that he who is himself a man, should think the calamities of others easy to be borne, and not his own, since he sees that the whole of life is naturally exposed to many calamities. Those however, that weep and lament, besides not being able to recover what they have lost, or recal to life those that are dead, impel the soul to greater perturbations, in consequence of its being filled with much depravity. It is requisite therefore, that, being washed and purified, we should by all possible contrivances wipe away our inveterate stains by the reasonings of philosophy. But we shall accomplish this by adhering to prudence and temperance, being satisfied with our present circumstances, and not aspiring after many things.

For men who procure for themselves a great abundance [of external goods], do not consider that the enjoyment of them terminates with the present life. We ought therefore to use the goods that are present; and by the assistance of the beautiful and venerable things of which philosophy is the source, we shall be liberated from the insatiable desire of depraved possessions.

(554) passions by an enforced virtue; not making them see that they are wrong, or taming them by reason, but by necessity and fear constraining them, and because he trembles for his possessions. To be sure. Yes, indeed, my dear friend, but you will find that the natural desires of the drone commonly exist in him all the same whenever he has to spend what is not his own. Yes, and they will be strong in him too. The man, then, will be at war with himself; he will be two men, and not one; but, in general, his better desires will be found to prevail over his inferior ones. True. For these reasons such an one will be more respectable than most people; yet the true virtue of a unanimous and harmonious soul will flee far away and never come near him. I should expect so. And surely, the miser individually will be an ignoble competitor in a State for any prize of victory, or other object of honourable ambition; he will not spend his money in the contest for glory; so afraid is he of awakening his expensive appetites and inviting them to help and join in the struggle; in true oligarchical fashion he fights with a small part only of his resources, and the result commonly is that he loses the prize and saves his money. Very true. Can we any longer doubt, then, that the miser and money-maker