previous

Click on a word to bring up parses, dictionary entries, and frequency statistics

εἰ δέ τινας οἱ ἐχθροὶ κολακεύοντες ἢ πανουργοῦντες ἢ δεκάζοντες ἢ μισθαρνοῦντες αἰσχρὰς καὶ ἀνελευθέρους δοκοῦσι καρποῦσθαι δυνάμεις ἐν αὐλαῖς ἢ πολιτείαις, οὐκ ἐνοχλήσουσιν ἡμᾶς ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον εὐφρανοῦσι, τὴν αὑτῶν ἐλευθερίαν καὶ τὸ καθαρὸν τοῦ βίου καὶ ἀνύβριστον ἀντιτιθέντας: ‘ ἅπας’ γὰρ ‘ὁ ὑπὲρ γῆς καὶ ὑπὸ γῆς χρυσὸς ἀρετῆς οὐκ ἀντάξιος’ κατὰ Πλάτωνα, 1 καὶ τὸ τοῦ Σόλωνος; 2 ἔχειν ἀεὶ δεῖ πρόχειρον [p. 224]
ἀλλ᾽ ἡμεῖς αὐτοῖς οὐ διαμειψόμεθα
τῆς ἀρετῆς τὸν πλοῦτον
οὐδέ γε βοὰς δεδειπνισμένων θεάτρων οὐδὲ τιμὰς καὶ προεδρίας παρ᾽ εὐνούχοις καὶ παλλακαῖς καὶ σατράπαις 3 βασιλέων: ζηλωτὸν γὰρ οὐδὲν οὐδὲ καλὸν ἐξ αἰσχροῦ φυόμενον. ἀλλ᾽ ἐπεὶ τυφλοῦται τὸ φιλοῦν περὶ τὸ φιλούμενον, ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων, 4 καὶ μᾶλλον ἡμῖν οἱ ἐχθροὶ παρέχουσιν αἴσθησιν ἀσχημονοῦντες, δεῖ μήτε τὸ χαῖρον ἐφ᾽ οἷς ἁμαρτάνουσιν ἀργὸν εἶναι μήτε τὸ λυπούμενον ἐφ᾽ οἷς κατορθοῦσιν, ἀλλ᾽ ἐπιλογίζεσθαι δι᾽ ἀμφοτέρων ὅπως τὰ μὲν φυλαττόμενοι βελτίονες ὦμεν αὐτῶν, τὰ δὲ μιμούμενοι μὴ χείρονες.

1 Πλάτωνα] Legg. p. 728 a

2 Σόλωνος Bergk. 2 p. 47

3 σατράπαις R: σατραπείαις

4 Πλάτων] Legg. p. 731 e

Plutarch. Moralia. Gregorius N. Bernardakis. Leipzig. Teubner. 1888. 1.

The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.

This text was converted to electronic form by optical character recognition and has been proofread to a high level of accuracy.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load Vocabulary Tool
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: