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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    77 Nor must we omit to observe, that though the Gods are not the causes of evil, yet they connect certain persons with things of this kind, and surround those who deserve [to be afflicted] with corporeal and external detri¬ ments; not through any malignity, or because they think it requisite that men should struggle with difficulties, but for the sake of punish¬ ment. For as pestilence and drought, and besides these excessive rain, earthquakes, and every thing of this kind, are for the most part produced through certain other more physical I causes, yet sometimes are effected by the Gods, when the times are such that the ini¬ quity of the multitude, publicly, and in com¬ mon, requires to be punished ; after the same manner, also, the Gods sometimes afflict an individual with corporeal and external detri¬ ments, in order to punish him, and convert others to what is right. But to be persuaded that the Gods are never the cause of any evil #, contributes greatly, as it appears to me, to proper conduct towards the Gods. For evils proceed from vice alone, * See on this most interesting subject, that divinity is not the cause of evil, my translation of the Fragments of Proclus on the Subsistence of Evil, at the end of my translation of his six books On the Theology of Plato.