- "I heard Herodes Atticus, a man of consular dignity,
speaking at Athens in Greek, in which he far excelled every one
within my memory in solemnity, copiousness, and elegance of diction.
He spoke against the apathy of the Stoics, having been attacked by a
Stoic, for not supporting the death of a son whom he loved, with
wisdom and fortitude. As far as I recollect, the tendency of what he
said was this, 'That no man who felt and thought naturally, could
so entirely divest himself of those affections of the mind (which he
called παθη) namely sorrow, desire, fear, anger, joy, as to be
wholly insensible of them, and not in some degree suffer grief; and
if even he could so strive against them as to annihilate them, it
would be no advantage, for the mind would languish and become
torpid, when deprived of those necessary stimulatives which are
found in the influence of the affections.
- "'For,' said he, 'those senses and impulses of
the mind, which when unrestrained become vices, are yet united
and bound together with the powers and energies of the mind: if,
therefore, we should ignorantly pluck them out all together, we
may happen to destroy the good and useful tendencies of the mind
together with the rest.' He was of opinion, therefore, that they
were to be regulated and purified by skill and deliberation, in
order that those qualities which appear injurious and unnatural,
and which have sprung up to the injury of the mind, may be
separated; lest perchance that should happen which once did (as
the story goes) to a Thracian rustic, in the cultivation of a
farm which he had bought.
- "'This fellow (said he) coming from a barbarous
country, unused to agriculture, after he had migrated into a
cultivated region, in order to enjoy more civilized life, bought
a farm planted with olives and vines: as he knew nothing about
vineyards or plantations, and happened to see a neighbor cutting
down thorns, which had spread themselves high and wide, trimming
his ash-trees at the top, plucking up the suckers of his vines,
and amputating the spreading shoots from the fruit-trees and the
olives; he approached him, and enquired why he made such havoc
among his wood and leaves. His neighbor replied, that the land
might be clean, and the vineyard more productive. He went away
then, thanking him, and rejoiced at his acquisition of
agricultural knowledge: taking up his pruning-hook and his
hatchet, he immediately, like a simpleton, falls to trimming his
vines and his olives, lops off the strongest branches of the
trees, and the most flourishing shoots of his vines, and roots
up, in order to purify his ground from thorns, the fruit-trees,
the shrubs, and every thing that bore corn or fruit, together
with the briars. He had dearly bought self-sufficiency, and by
injudicious imitation, had learned confidently to plunge into
error.'
- "'So,' adds he, 'these preachers of apathy, who
wish to appear at ease, undaunted and immoveable, while they
wish for nothing, are grieved at nothing, angry at nothing, and
rejoiced at nothing; cutting off all the more powerful energies
of the mind, grow old in dragging on a life without exertion,
and without capacity for action.'"
- (Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, Volume III, Book
XIX, Chapter XII, pp. 398-400).
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