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Book II Chapter 31

Archytas continued

There are, then, two rival lives, competing for primacy: the practical and the philosophical. A life blended from both, arranged along each course for suitable occasions, seems much better.¹³⁰⁵ We were born for intellectual activity, which we call action. Of thought, the practical part turns toward civic life, the part concerned with knowledge toward contemplation of all things. Intellect as a whole, encompassing these two powers, aims at happiness—which we say is the activity of virtue amid good fortune—allowing it neither to be solely practical and so exclude knowledge, nor contemplative and so inactive.¹³⁰⁶ For complete thought inclines toward two governing principles for which the human being is naturally fitted: the social and the knowing. Even if the ways of life answering to such conceptions seem to crowd each other out (civic pursuits drawing one away from contemplation, contemplative pursuits leading from civic life into quiet), nature has brought their ends together and shown them realized together. For the virtues are not mutually opposed, but more concordant than any harmony.¹³⁰⁷

Archytas continued

If someone sets out from youth and brings himself into harmony with the principles of the virtues and the divine law of the cosmos’s harmony, he will lead a smooth-flowing life. If, while straying on his own, he happens upon better guides, he will be able to straighten his course toward the greatest happiness.¹³⁰⁸ So those who meet with misfortune on a voyage cross the sea through the navigator’s art, seeking ⟨the⟩ successful passage, which in life corresponds to happiness.¹³⁰⁹ But if he neither understands for himself what is conducive to this nor finds wise guardians, abundant resources are of no use. For folly, even if fortunate in other respects, is always unhappy.¹³¹⁰

Archytas continued

Since in everything one must first consider the goal, as navigators do by setting before themselves the harbor where they will put in, charioteers the finish of a race, and archers and slingers a target toward which they make every adjustment,¹³¹¹ virtue too, as an art of life, must have some target or objective set before it; I use these names in either case. I say that this is what is best in practical matters, ⟨what is wisest in matters of knowledge⟩, and the complete good of life, which ⟨the⟩ wise in human affairs call happiness.¹³¹²

Archytas continued

Those in a bad condition cannot judge this truly, nor can those who do not see it very clearly choose it. Those who give pleasure first place pay the penalty of folly; those who prefer freedom from pain to everything are punished. In general, those who abandon the happy life in bodily comfort or an irrational condition of soul are choked in a cruel storm.¹³¹³

Not much more fortunate than these are those who exalt the noble [wording uncertain],¹³¹⁴ but hold pleasure, freedom from pain, primary and natural pleasant states, and irrational impulses of body or soul to be of equal worth with it. For they wrong both: they bring the soul’s eminence and its activities down to equality with the body’s perfection, while raising bodily well-being to the same height as the soul’s pleasure. Nature and the divine have also taken offense at their blending, for they do not preserve the worth of the better relative to the worse.¹³¹⁵

Archytas continued

But we, for our part, say that the body is an instrument of the soul, and intellect the leader of the rest of the soul and of its bodily frame.¹³¹⁶ Good fortune in other matters is naturally instrumental to intellectual activity, provided it is complete in power, time and resources.¹³¹⁷

Hieronymus

Come, let us also consider how fathers have understood children’s upbringing. For here too, as in the preceding matters, we shall find them seriously inconsistent.¹³¹⁸ They first hand ⟨the children⟩ over to barbarian pedagogues and tell them to obey these men, and consider this adequate care.¹³¹⁹ It is as though children needed someone to follow on their heels rather than lead them well, and someone to guard them like a swineherd against straying, rather than . . .¹³²⁰ That is why they assign a man rejected as a laborer to serve as a pedagogue, giving what is naturally most precious to those valued least. So, when a household slave once fell from an olive tree and broke his leg, Pericles said, “A new pedagogue has appeared, then.” His mockery of the low esteem of this service was not without point.¹³²¹

Iamblichus, letter to Sopater, On the Upbringing of Children

In every animal and plant, the first growth, well directed toward each one’s excellence, is the most decisive of all for bringing about the fitting end.¹³²² So too, in children’s sound development, nature’s earliest and best advance proceeds methodically ⟨and⟩ in due order toward the perfection it deserves to reach.¹³²³ Proper education fittingly leads this advance, already sowing seeds of the virtues and creating in souls still tender and untrodden a remarkable affinity with the pursuit of noble things.¹³²⁴

On the Upbringing of Children continued

First, through the senses, education presents in father, mother, pedagogue and teacher a model of noble deeds, so that children seeing these deeds may aspire to become like those people.¹³²⁵ Then it guides them well through habits and implants good character, while rational understanding is not yet within their power, turning their souls toward the better through familiarity with noble things.¹³²⁶ In addition, it brings their pleasure and pain into accord with noble ⟨and shameful⟩ deeds, so that they not only do noble deeds but also rejoice in them in due measure, and not merely avoid shameful things but also feel distaste for them at just the right time.¹³²⁷

1305.The practical and philosophical lives compete for precedence. The proposed blend gives each its fitting occasions; it does not simply identify them. Πρᾶξις is then used broadly enough to include intellectual activity.

1306.Εὐδαιμονία is happiness or flourishing, distinguished here from εὐτυχία, good fortune. The compressed passage joins action and knowledge within that happiness, rather than excluding either.

1307.The closing comparison makes the virtues mutually consonant. Even where civic and contemplative pursuits compete for time or attention, the argument presents their fulfillment as compatible.

1308.The Doric ἁρμόσδηται means brings himself into harmony. The principles of the virtues are joined to the cosmic harmony’s divine law; εὔροον, smooth-flowing, carries this order into the description of a life. Τύχῃ with the genitive means happens upon better guides.

1309.Wachsmuth supplies ⟨τᾶς⟩ before εὐπλοίας; the English marks the corresponding article. The navigator’s skill directs an adverse voyage toward successful passage, the comparison’s counterpart to happiness in life.

1310.Χοραγία is provision or material resources. The closing sentence makes folly itself the subject: even favorable circumstances cannot make it happy. The text distinguishes being fortunate, εὐτυχεῖ, from happiness, εὐδαιμονία.

1311.The repeated images give τέλος the sense of an end or goal: harbor, finish and target. The Greek retains [νεὼς], a ship-word Wachsmuth rejects as a duplication; the English omits it. The following σκοπός and πρόθεσις name a target or purpose for the art of living.

1312.The entire clause ⟨τῶν δὲ ἐπισταμονικῶν τὸ σοφώτατον⟩ is Wachsmuth’s supplement, balancing practical matters with matters of knowledge. He also supplies ⟨τοὶ⟩, the, before the wise. Both supplements are marked. The complete good of life is identified with εὐδαιμονία, happiness.

1313.This refers to happiness at the end of the preceding unit. Ἀναλγησία is absence of pain or insensibility to it; εὐπάθεια here concerns comfortable or pleasant conditions. The passage rejects treating these states as the highest good and continues the voyage image with a destructive storm.

1314.The English comment wording uncertain flags ὡς καττούτω τί μὴ λέγεν, retained unchanged in Greek. Wachsmuth reports that τί μὴ λέγεν seemed corrupt to Meineke. No secure translation of these intervening words is asserted; the contrast between exalting the noble and giving other states equal worth remains clear.

1315.The list of pleasant states and natural impulses is compressed in Greek, and its precise coordination is uncertain. Διακράσι describes their blending of these goods. Doric ἀκρότατα, ἰσότατα and τεληότατα correspond to eminence, equality and perfection. The text says soul’s pleasure at the end of the comparison; it does not replace that phrase with virtue. Both body and soul are wronged by the resulting hierarchy.

1316.The Doric ἁμὲς λέγομες means we say. Σκᾶνος is the bodily frame. The image makes the body an instrument and intellect its leader, while also distinguishing intellect from the rest of the soul.

1317.The final αἴ κα clause is conditional, with an unstated subject. The English takes it to concern favorable circumstances complete in capacity, time and provision. Χοραγία again means resources or support. External good fortune serves intellectual activity as an instrument; it is not identified with happiness itself. This ends excerpt 120; the numbered subdivisions and continued labels serve layout only.

1318.The heading names Hieronymus without identifying a work or giving further biographical details. The opening refers to preceding matters in the discussion, not to past generations.

1319.Βάρβαροι marks the attendants as non-Greek. A παιδαγωγός here supervises a child’s conduct, rather than teaching a classroom subject. Wachsmuth supplies ⟨τοὺς παῖδας⟩, ⟨the children⟩.

1320.The follower–leader contrast concerns direction rather than mere physical custody. Three printed dots mark a gap after ἀλλ’ οὐχὶ, rather than; the missing positive contrast is not restored.

1321.Οἰκέτης is a household slave, not explicitly Pericles’s own. The quip exposes the low value attached to the attendant’s role. Νέος means new here, not necessarily young; no further occasion is specified.

1322.The heading identifies a letter of Iamblichus to Sopater and gives its subject. The numerical divisions and continued labels serve layout only. In the opening plant-and-animal comparison, ἀρετή is excellence; the subsequent virtues concern human upbringing.

1323.Πασῶν, of all, is retained without supplying a noun. Wachsmuth supplies τε, mirrored by ⟨and⟩. The sentence connects good initial development with an ordered movement toward its proper completion.

1324.Ἀβάτοις is the printed reading, untrodden; the apparatus records the proposed εὐβάτοις, easily traversed, without adopting it. The seeds and tender souls extend the growth image into early moral formation.

1325.The model is embodied in the adults’ conduct. The English connects αὐτά, these things, with the children’s seeing, and αὐτούς with the adult models they seek to resemble. Pedagogue and teacher are listed separately.

1326.Habituation precedes the child’s ability to grasp through reason. The rejected [τε] remains visible in Greek but is omitted from the translated sense; no additional conjunction is inserted there.

1327.Wachsmuth supplies ⟨καὶ αἰσχρὰ⟩, ⟨and shameful⟩. The aim includes proportionate pleasure and timely aversion, alongside doing or avoiding the corresponding deeds.