patraloion katadikes aphestekasin+', Fr. 49. Usener, from Philodemus,
_De Rhet._ This may be only a playful reference to Plato's phrase about
being a +patraloias+ of his father, Parmenides, _Soph._, p. 241 D.

[113:3] Epicurus congratulated himself (erroneously) that he came to
Philosophy +katharos pases paideias+, 'undefiled by education'. Cf. Fr.
163 to Pythocles, +paideian de pasan, makarie, pheuge to akation
aramenos+, 'From education in every shape, my son, spread sail and fly!'

[113:4] Fr. 343-6.

[116:1] Pythias was the niece, or ward, of Aristotle's friend, Hermias,
an extraordinary man who rose from slavery to be first a free man and a
philosopher, and later Prince or 'Dynast' of Assos and Atarneus. In the
end he was treacherously entrapped by the Persian General, Mentor, and
crucified by the king. Aristotle's 'Ode to Virtue' is addressed to him.
To his second wife, Herpyllis, Aristotle was only united by a civil
marriage like the Roman _usus_.

[116:2] See note on Dicaearchus at end of chapter.

IV

THE FAILURE OF NERVE

Any one who turns from the great writers of classical Athens, say
Sophocles or Aristotle, to those of the Christian era must be conscious
of a great difference in tone. There is a change in the whole relation
of the writer to the world about him. The new quality is not
specifically Christian: it is just as marked in the Gnostics and
Mithras-worshippers as in the Gospels and the Apocalypse, in Julian and
Plotinus as in Gregory and Jerome. It is hard to describe. It is a rise
of asceticism, of mysticism, in a sense, of pessimism; a loss of
self-confidence, of hope in this life and of faith in normal human
effort; a despair of patient inquiry, a cry for infallible revelation;
an indifference to the welfare of the state, a conversion of the soul to
God. It is an atmosphere in which the aim of the good man is not so much
to live justly, to help the society to which he belongs and enjoy the
esteem of his fellow creatures; but rather, by means of a burning faith,
by contempt for the world and its standards, by ecstasy, suffering, and
martyrdom, to be granted pardon for his unspeakable unworthiness, his
immeasurable sins. There is an intensifying of certain spiritual
emotions; an increase of sensitiveness, a failure of nerve.

Now this antithesis is often exaggerated by the admirers of one side or
the other. A hundred people write as if Sophocles had no mysticism and
practically sp