Chapter XXI. What Kind of Thoughts the Odes Should Contain

[P] [1] ‘You compel your poets to say that the good man, as being temperate and just, is happy and blessed, whether he be tall and strong, or small and weak, and whether he be rich or poor: but if he should perchance

“Midas and Cinyras in wealth surpass,” [2]

and be unjust, he would be miserable and live a wretched life.

‘Also your poet, if he speaks rightly, says,

“Ne’er would I praise, nor count for aught, a man” [3]

who did not combine justice with the practice and attainment of all things accounted honourable; and, being a just man,

“Close should he stand and strive to reach the foe:” [4]

but if unjust he should

“Not dare to look on battle’s bloody death, [5] Nor outstrip Thracian Boreas in the race,” [6]

nor ever have any other of the so-called good things, for the things called good by the many have no right to the name.

‘For health is called the best, and beauty the second, and wealth the third; and numberless other things are called good, such as quick sight and hearing, and the sensitive and sound condition of all organs connected with the senses, and again to be a tyrant and do whatever one likes, and then it is said the consummation of all blessedness is to have acquired all these things and then come to be immortal as soon as possible.

‘But you and I say this, I suppose, that to just and holy men these are all excellent possessions, but to the unjust great evils all of them, beginning with health. For indeed to have sight and hearing and sensation and to live at all are the greatest of evils for a man who possesses all the so-called goods without justice and virtue in general if he is to be immortal for ever, but a less evil if such a one survive as short a time as possible.

‘These then are the things which I suppose you will persuade and compel your poets to say, as I do, and also by making their rhythms and harmonies correspond thereto, so to train your youths. Do you not see? For I say plainly that evil things so-called are to the unjust good, but evil to the just: and good things to the good are really good, but evil to the evil. As I was asking then before, do you and I agree, or how say you?’

These thoughts are not much unlike David’s Psalms, which he had previously composed by divine inspiration, teaching by songs and hymns who is the truly blessed man, and who the contrary. This, at least, is the thought with which his Book begins, where he says: ‘Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly,’ [7] and so on. This is what Plato has altered when he declares that the poets ought to say, ‘that the good man being temperate and just is happy and blessed, and if a man be rich but unjust, he is miserable.’

And the very same thought David again expressed thus in the Psalms, saying: ‘If riches abound, set not your heart upon them.’[8] And again: ‘Be not thou afraid when a man is made rich, and when the glory of his house is increased.’[9] And at your leisure you may find each of the philosopher’s sayings stated word for word throughout the whole sacred writing of the Psalms.