The Shepherd, November 2008
Don’t take popularity as your guide!
But are we to despise wealth, and to hold cheap the pleasures of the senses, only to go looking for flattery and praise, and become shifty and cunning like Archilochus’ fox?42 No! There is nothing a wise man must avoid more carefully than living for popularity and taking seriously what majority opinion admires. He must take sound reason as his guide for life. He will never choose to turn aside from what he knows is right, even if he has to contradict everyone, lose their respect, and lay himself open to danger for the sake of what is good. Suppose that someone praises justice at one time, when in the company of people who honour it, but then does a complete U-turn when he sees that injustice is held in honour. (That is how flatterers behave.) A man of so unstable a character is like the Egyptian charlatan43 who transformed his appearance into a plant, a wild animal, fire, water, or anything else, whenever he wished. So the flatterer changes his mind according to the opinions of the people around him, like the polyp which (they say) changes its colour to match the ground it lies on.
Gathering everything that is good from every source:
travel-supplies for eternity
You youngsters will undoubtedly learn all these things more fully from our own Christian literature. For the time being, though, you should trace a rough sketch of what virtue is according to the teaching of the Pagans. All sorts of good things are added to us from every side, like the many side-streams that flow into a mighty river, when we devote ourselves to seeking out the benefit that we can gain from every source. Hesiod’s saying, “adding little to little,” is more true of increasing our knowledge than our money. The son of Bias44 was about to go to Egypt, and he asked his father what he could do that would please him most. Bias replied, “Acquire travel-supplies for your old age.” By “travel-supplies” he no doubt meant virtue. He defined it too narrowly, however, by limiting the blessings of virtue to this present life. I laugh at this childish idea when I look forward to that vast and ageless eternity whose limits no mind can grasp, any more than it can conceive any end to the immortal soul. So do not tell me about the old age of Tithonus,45 or Arganthonius,46 or Methuselah whose life was longest of all (he lived thirty years short of a thousand).47
Indeed, if you reckon up all the time that has passed since men first existed, it is nothing compared to eternity. It is for this eternity that I exhort you to gather your travel-supplies. Wherever any benefit for that purpose is likely to be found, leave no stone unturned! This is difficult and demands hard work; but let us not grow slack on that account. Remember the words of Pythagoras, that everyone should choose the best kind of life, and through habitual practice it will become sweet. In that spirit, let us attempt the best things. It would be shameful if we threw away our present opportunity, and then later tried to summon back the past, when all our bother will gain us nothing.
Conclusion: associate with people of sound mind!
Accordingly, I have now told you some of the things which I think are best. Other things I will continue to recommend to you throughout my whole life. As for you, my children, remember that there are three kinds of physical sickness. Do not resemble in your souls the sickness that is incurable; do not show that disease of the mind which is like a physical affliction. For first, those who suffer from slight illnesses take themselves to a doctor. Second, those who suffer more serious illnesses call the doctor to their homes. But third, those who have reached that melancholy condition that is totally beyond a cure do not even allow the doctor in when he calls. Do not become afflicted in this third way in your inner life, by steering clear of people whose minds are sound! Alas, that is the characteristic of those who live in our present age.
Footnotes:-
20 Polydamas, victor in the 93rd Olympic games in 408 BC.
21 Milo of Crotona (lived around the end of the 6th century BC), six times champion at the Olympic games. He was a byword for physical strength.
22 He challenged opponents to knock him off.
23 Marsyas was a satyr in Greek mythology who played the flute. Olympus, a human composer, was his disciple.
24 Timotheus of Miletus (roughly 450-357 BC), Greek poet and musician.
25 In ancient Greek music, different “modes” (similar to “scales”) conveyed different feelings. The seven modes were the Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian. The Phrygian mode that Timotheus played to Alexander conveyed a heavy and dark musical mood.
26 Sardanapalus was a legendary Assyrian king who lived in great luxury.
27 Margites, the character in a poem of that name attributed by some to Homer, by others to Pigres of Halicarnassus. In the poem, Margites is depicted as a useless buffoon.
28 Pittacus (roughly 650-570 BC), one of the seven wise men of Pagan Greece.
29 Traditional punishments in the Greek Pagan concept of Hades.
30 Diogenes of Sinope (born around 412, died 323 BC), a Greek philosopher - born in Sinope but lived in Athens. St Basil refers to a story that when Diogenes saw a young man dressing up, he said to him, “If you dress to attract men, you are cursed with ill-fortune. If it is to attract women, you are an ill-doer.”
31 A paraphrase of Plato.
32 1 Kings 16:23, “And so it was, whenever the spirit from God was upon Saul, that David would take a harp and play it with his hand. Then Saul would become refreshed and well, and the distressing spirit would depart from him.”
33 See footnote 22. In Ancient Greek music, the Dorian mode was associated with the stern mood of war.
34 Corybantes were devotees of the goddess Cybele who worshipped her with wild music and dancing.
35 Bacchus was the god of wine.
36 1 Corinthians 9:27, “I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.”
37 The gold-gathering ants are a legend from India. According to the legend, the ants were slightly larger than foxes, and sometimes called ant-lions. They dug up gold in the desert and protected it fiercely against human raiders.
38 Of Persia.
39 Reputed in his day to be the richest man in the world.
40 Phidias (roughly 500-432 BC), one of the greatest sculptors of ancient Greece.
41 Polyclitus (active around 450-20 BC), another great Greek sculptor.
42 According to the tale of Archilocus of Paros, the fox made a pact with the eagle. The eagle broke the pact & killed the fox’s young during the fox’s absence. So the fox revenged himself by taking a flaming torch from an altar & setting fire to the eagle’s nest.
43 Proteus, a sea god. Hence the adjective “protean”, assuming many shapes.
44 Bias lived in the 6th century BC. He was one of the seven wise men of Pagan Greece.
45 In Greek mythology, Tithonus was the human lover of the dawn goddess Eos. Zeus granted him immortality, but not eternal youth, so he just kept getting older.
46 “In heaven’s name, can we call anything human long? Even if we lived as long as Arganthonius, the King of the Tartessi, who reigned, so it is recorded, eighty years, and lived to the age of a hundred and twenty, still, it seems to me, nothing that has an end is long.” An Essay on Old Age, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC).
47 Genesis 5:27, “So all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred and sixty-nine years; and he died.”
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