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130 Pages
Page 111
This was his revenge. Where conduct, as in this case, is so much on a par with Christian conduct, [673] I maintain that it is well worth our while to copy these great men. The behaviour of Socrates on this occasion is akin to the precept that we are by no means to take revenge, but to turn the other cheek to the smiter. So the conduct of Pericles and Euclid matches the commands to put up with persecutors, and to bear their wrath with meekness, and to invoke not cursing but blessing on our enemies. He who has been previously instructed in these examples will no longer regard the precepts as impracticable. I should like, too, to instance the conduct of Alexander, when he had captured the daughters of Darius. [674] Their beauty is described as extraordinary, and Alexander would not so much as look at them, for he thought it shameful that a conqueror of men should be vanquished by women. This is of a piece with the statement that he who looks at a woman impurely, even though he do not actually commit the act of adultery with her, is not free from guilt, because he has allowed lust to enter his heart. Then there is the case of Clinias, the follower of Pythagoras: it is difficult to believe this is a case of accidental, and not intentional, imitation of our principles. [675] What of him? He might have escaped a fine of three talents by taking an oath, but he preferred to pay rather than swear, and this when he would have sworn truly. He appears to me to have heard of the precept which orders us to swear not at all. [676] To return to the point with which I began. We must not take everything indiscriminately, but only what is profitable. It would be shameful for us in the case of food to reject the injurious, and at the same time, in the case of lessons, to take no account of what keeps the soul alive, but, like mountain streams, to sweep in everything that happens to be in our way. The sailor does not trust himself to the mercy of the winds, but steers his boat to the port; the archer aims at his mark; the smith and the carpenter keep the end of the crafts in view. What sense is there in our shewing ourselves inferior to these craftsmen, though we are quite able to understand our own affairs? In mere handicrafts is there some object and end in labour, and is there no aim in the life of man, to which any one ought to look who means to live a life better than the brutes? Were no intelligence to be sitting at the tiller of our souls, we should be dashed up and down in the voyage of life like boats that have no ballast. It is just as with competitions in athletics, or, if you like, in music.
[673] tois hemeterois.
[674] cf. Plutarch, Alex. and Arrian. II. xii.
[675] Clinias was a contemporary of Plato (Diog. Laert. ix. 40).
[676] St. Basil can hardly imagine that Clinias lived after Christ; yet Old Testament prohibitions are against false swearing only. Possibly the third commandment and such a passage as Lev. xix. 12, may have been in his mind. If Clinias had lived some half a millennium later there seems no reason why he should not have saved himself three talents by using the words of the Apostle in 2 Cor. xi. 31.
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/basil/life-works.asp?pg=111
