associated with these meetings. He condemns the
submission of great principles to the verdicts of the crowd at their
theatres, and passes to a further vivid onslaught on their quarrels and
murders (they are no longer men {256} but beasts), on their use of
music to excite their bloodthirsty passions, and on war altogether as
contrary to 'the law of nature,' and involving the pursuit of all sorts
of vice. All this impeachment may be compared with St. Paul, who
speaks however by comparison with marked reserve, in Rom. i. 24-31,
Eph. iv. 17-19, and elsewhere.

(4) The eighth letter is again written to Hermodorus now on his way to
Italy to assist the Decemvirs with the Ten Tables. It contains a
somewhat remarkable 'judgement on wealthy Ephesus' and statement of the
judicial function of wealth. 'God does not punish by taking wealth
away, but rather gives it to the wicked, that through having
opportunity to sin they may be convicted, and by the very abundance of
their resources may exhibit their corruption on a wider stage.' Cf. 1
Tim. vi. 9.

(5) The banishment of Hermodorus had been on account of a proposed law
to grant equal citizenship to freed men, and the right of public office
to their children. This instance of Ephesian intolerance gives
occasion for an enunciation of the Stoic doctrine that the only real
freedom is moral freedom, and moral freedom constitutes a man a citizen
of the world. 'The good Ephesian is a citizen of the world. For this
is the common home of all, and its law is no written document but God
(Greek: ou gramma alla theos), and he who transgresses his duty shall
be impious; or rather he will not dare to transgress, for he will not
escape justice.' 'Let the Ephesians cease to be the sort of men they
are, and they will love all men in an equality of virtue.' 'Virtue,
not the chance of birth, makes men equal.' 'Only vice enslaves, only
virtue liberates.' For men to enslave their fellow men is to fall
below the beasts; so also to mutilate them as the Ephesians do their
Megabyzi--the eunuch-priests of the wooden image of Artemis. There
must be inequality of function in the world, but not refusal of
fellowship, as the {257} higher parts of nature do not despise the
lower, or the soul think scorn to dwell with the body, or the head
despise the entrails, or God refuse to give the gifts of nature, such
as the light of the sun, to all equally. Here again we have what is
both like and unlike St