Oration 68
Imperial Dio Chrysostom Greek- The mass of mankind, in all that they practise or pursue, practise it knowing nothing of what it is nor what benefit it brings, but are led toward it by opinion or pleasure or habit. Nor again, in all that they abstain from and take care not to do, do they abstain because they know what harms them, nor of what sort the harm is; rather, even of these things, they are for the most part suspicious of whatever they see others avoiding, or whatever they have fallen into the habit of avoiding, or whatever they think will be unpleasant for them and seems to involve some toil. 2. And the matter of pleasure and of toil is common to all, though some are less, others more, enslaved by them; but the matter of opinion is dissimilar and not the same for all. Whence some praise and blame these things, others those, and often the contrary. For instance, both the Indian and the Spartan feel pain when wounded or burned, and so do the Phrygian and the Lydian; but the former do not yield, because they have trained themselves, while the latter do, because they are weak and untrained. Again, the Ionian and the Thessalian and the Italian Greek and the Getan and the Indian and the Spartan must all take pleasure in love and in pleasant meats and drinks; but some do not care much for pleasures, and do not even attempt them at all, while others would choose to die for a little more pleasure. 3. The matter of opinion, then, appears to be of the most manifold kind, and the variation in it is the greatest and the widest. And for this reason one would find in no kind of animal so much faction, nor any kind so much at variance with itself—of horses, say, or dogs or lions or oxen or deer—but they are nourished alike, and breed and rear their young alike, and rush after the same things and abstain from the same things, those that are alike. For they follow, for the most part, the pleasant alone, and flee the painful. 4. But man, by nature partaking of prudence, yet falling short of it through baseness and indolence, is within full of opinion and deception; and they differ from one another in all things—about clothing and dress, about food and love, about honour and dishonour—according to nations and cities; and likewise within the city each man for himself has set his heart, one upon acquiring as much land as possible, another money, another slaves, another all these together; one upon being admired for his speaking and thereby having more power than the rest, another upon merely being clever and has set his heart upon experience in affairs, another upon being strong through something else, another practises as much luxury as he can. 5. None of these, then, as I said, would, in all likelihood, do anything rightly—not even those who seem to pursue the best things. For they choose nothing knowing the better or the worse or the expedient. But whoever has come to desire prudence and has considered how a man must take care of himself, and in what discipline he must be schooled, so as to become a good man and one who excels the multitude—this man, I say, has met with a good nature and with a like fortune. For there is hope that, by seeking and by being schooled, he will discover what is needful, and with a view to what, and wishing what, he must do and order all the rest. 6. And he who has understood this would now do all things well, both the greater and the smaller; and whether he practised the contest of horsemanship, or of music, or gave attention to farming, or wished to be a general, or to hold the other magistracies, or to manage the rest of the common affairs in the city, he would do all things well and would fail in nothing. But without this he would sometimes seem, both to himself and to others, to succeed in each several task—as, for instance, if in farming he hit upon a good crop, or were more skilled at riding, or knew the things of music sufficiently, or, when competing, could prevail over his adversaries—but in the sum of things he would err, since he works at these things with a view to no good, nor so as to be benefited. 7. He cannot, then, be happy, just as one cannot make a good voyage who does not know whither he sails, but is now borne at random over the deep—the ship sailing straight, if it so chance, now veering off, and now the wind blowing fair, now contrary. But just as on the lyre men first establish the middle note and then tune the others to it—otherwise they will never produce any harmony—so in life men ought, having understood the best and set this up as their end, to do the rest with a view to this; otherwise it is to be expected that their life will become discordant and out of tune.