Political fragments of Archytas, Charondas, Zaleucus, and other ancient Pythagoreans, preserved by Stobaeus; and also, ethical fragments of Hierocles ... preserved by the same author / Translated from the Greek. By Thomas Taylor.

  • Thomas Taylor
Date:
1822
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Political fragments of Archytas, Charondas, Zaleucus, and other ancient Pythagoreans, preserved by Stobaeus; and also, ethical fragments of Hierocles ... preserved by the same author / Translated from the Greek. By Thomas Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    city, and importing into it other things from foreign countries. The systems of political society, therefore, are coarranged through so many and such like parts. In the next place, it is requisite to speak of their adaptation and union. Since, however, the whole of political society may be perfectly assimilated to a lyre, in consequence of requir¬ ing apparatus and coaptation, and also because it is necessary that it should be touched and used musically;—this being the case, I have sufficiently spoken above about the apparatus of a polity, and shown from what and from how many particulars it is constituted. I shall now, therefore, endeavour to speak of the coaptation and union of these. I say then, that political society is coadapted from the following three particulars, from disciplines, the study of man¬ ners [or customs], and from the laws; and that through these three, man is instructed, and be¬ comes more worthy. For disciplines are the sources of erudition, and cause the desires to be impelled to virtue. But the laws, partly de¬ taining by fear, repell men [from the commis¬ sion of crimes,] and partly alluring by honours and gifts, excite them [to virtue]. And man¬ ners and studies fashion the soul like wax, and through their continued energy impress in it propensities that become, as it were, natural.