that a man’s opinions about each thing, is that which hurts him, is that which overturns him; this is fighting, this is civil discord, this is war?  That which made Eteocles and Polynices enemies was nothing else than this opinion which they had about royal power, their opinion about exile, that the one is the extreme of evils, the other the greatest good.  Now this is the nature of every man to seek the good, to avoid the bad; to consider him who deprives us of the one and involves us in the other an enemy and treacherous, even if he be a brother, or a son, or a father.  For nothing is more akin to us than the good; therefore, if these things (externals) are good and evil, neither is a father a friend to sons, nor a brother to a brother, but all the world is everywhere full of enemies, treacherous men, and sycophants.  But if the will ([Greek:  proairesis], the purpose, the intention) being what it ought to be, is the only good; and if the will being such as it ought not to be, is the only evil, where is there any strife, where is there reviling? about what? about the things which do not concern us? and strife with whom? with the ignorant, the unhappy, with those who are deceived about the chief things?

Remembering this Socrates managed his own house and endured a very ill-tempered wife and a foolish (ungrateful?) son.

* * * * *

Against those who lament over being pitied.—­I am grieved, a man says, at being pitied.  Whether then is the fact of your being pitied a thing which concerns you or those who pity you?  Well, is it in your power to stop this pity?  It is in my power, if I show them that I do not require pity.  And whether then are you in the condition of not deserving (requiring) pity, or are you not in that condition?  I think that I am not; but these persons do not pity me, for the things for which, if they ought to pity me, it would be proper, I mean, for my faults; but they pity me for my poverty, for not possessing honorable offices, for diseases and deaths and other such things.  Whether then are you prepared to convince the many, that not one of these things is an evil, but that it is possible for a man who is poor and has no office ([Greek:  anarchonti)] and enjoys no honor to be happy; or to show yourself to them as rich and in power?  For the second of these things belong to a man who is boastful, silly, and good for nothing.  And consider by what means the pretence must be supported.  It will be necessary for you to hire slaves and to possess a few silver vessels, and to exhibit them in public, if it is possible, though they are often the same, and to attempt to conceal the fact that they are the same, and to have splendid garments, and all other things for display, and to show that you are a man honored by the great, and to try to sup at their houses, or to be supposed to sup there, and as to your person to employ some mean arts, that you may