Fragments XLI-LX
Fragment XLI. It is better to live with one free man and to be without fear and free, than to be a slave with many.
Fragment XLII. What you avoid suffering, do not attempt to make others suffer. You avoid slavery: take care that others are not your slaves. For if you endure to have a slave, you appear to be a slave yourself first. For vice has no community with virtue, nor freedom with slavery.
Fragment XLIII. As he who is in health would not choose to be served (ministered to) by the sick, nor for those who dwell with him to be sick, so neither would a free man endure to be served by slaves, or for those who live with him to be slaves.
Fragment XLIV. Whoever you are who wish to be not among the number of slaves, release yourself from slavery: and you will be free, if you are released from desire. For neither Aristides nor Epaminondas nor Lycurgus through being rich and served by slaves were named the one just, the other a god, and the third a saviour, but because they were poor and delivered Hellas (Greece) from slavery.
Fragment XLV. If you wish your house to be well managed, imitate the Spartan Lycurgus. For as he did not fence his city with walls, but fortified the inhabitants by virtue and preserved the city always free; so do you not cast around (your house) a large court and raise high towers, but strengthen the dwellers by good will and fidelity and friendship, and then nothing harmful will enter it, not even if the whole band of wickedness shall array itself against it.
Fragment XLVI. Do not hang your house round with tablets and pictures, but decorate it with moderation (σωφροσύνη): for the one is of a foreign (unsuitable) kind, and a temporary deception of the eyes; but the other is a natural and indelible, and perpetual ornament of the house.
Fragment XLVII. Instead of an herd of oxen, endeavour to assemble herds of friends in your house.
Fragment XLVIII. As a wolf resembles a dog, so both a flatterer, and an adulterer and a parasite, resemble a friend. Take care then that instead of watch dogs you do not without knowing it let in mischievous wolves.
Fragment XLIX. To be eager that your house should be admired by being whitened with gypsum, is the mark of a man who has no taste: but to set off (decorate) our morals by the goodness of our communication (social habits) is the mark of a man who is a lover of beauty and a lover of man.
Fragment L. If you begin by admiring little things, you will not be thought worthy of great things: but if you despise the little, you will be greatly admired.
Fragment LI. Nothing is smaller (meaner) than love of pleasure, and love of gain and pride. Nothing is superior to magnanimity, and gentleness, and love of mankind, and beneficence.
Fragment LII. They bring forward (they name, they mention) the peevish philosophers (the Stoics), whose opinion it is that pleasure is not a thing conformable to nature, but is a thing which is consequent on the things which are conformable to nature, as justice, temperance, freedom. What then? is the soul pleased and made tranquil by the pleasures of the body which are smaller, as Epicurus says; and is it not pleased with its own good things, which are the greatest? And indeed nature has given to me modesty, and I blush much when I think of saying any thing base (indecent). This motion (feeling) does not permit me to make (consider) pleasure the good and the end (purpose) of life.
Fragment LIII. In Rome the women have in their hands Plato's Polity (the Republic), because it allows (advises) the women to be common, for they attend only to the words of Plato, not to his meaning. Now he does not recommend marriage and one man to cohabit with one woman, and then that the women should be common but he takes away such a marriage, and introduces another kind of marriage. And in fine, men are pleased with finding excuses for their faults. Yet philosophy says that we ought not to stretch out even a finger without a reason.
Fragment LIV. Of pleasures those which occur most rarely give the greatest delight.
Fragment LV. If a man should transgress moderation, the things which give the greatest delight would become the things which give the least.
Fragment LVI. It is just to commend Agrippinus for this reason, that though he was a man of the highest worth, he never praised himself; but even if another person praised him, he would blush. And he was such a man (Epictetus said) that he would write in praise of any thing disagreeable that befel him; if it was a fever, he would write of a fever; if he was disgraced, he would write of disgrace; if he were banished, of banishment. And on one occasion (he mentioned) when he was going to dine, a messenger brought him news that Nero commanded him to go into banishment; on which Agrippinus said, Well then we will dine at Aricia.
Fragment LVII. Diogenes said that no labour was good, unless the end (purpose) of it was courage and strength (τόνος) of the soul, but not of the body.
Fragment LVIII. As a true balance is neither corrected by a true balance nor judged by a false balance, so also a just judge is neither corrected by just judges nor is he judged (condemned) by unjust judges.
Fragment LIX. As that which is straight does not need that which is straight, so neither does the just need that which is just.
Fragment LX. Do not give judgment in one court (of justice) before you have been tried yourself before justice.