governing, and being governed, concerning judging and pleading,
and yet there is not to be found in any of their lives either leading of
armies, making of laws, going to parliament, pleading before the judges,
fighting for their country, travelling on embassies, or making of public
gifts, but they have all, feeding (if I may so say) on rest as on the
lotus, led their whole lives, and those not short but very long ones,
in foreign countries, amongst disputations, books, and walkings; it
is manifest that they have lived rather according to the writings and
sayings of others than their own professions, having spent all their
days in that repose which Epicurus and Hieronymus so much commend.

Chrysippus indeed himself, in his Fourth Book of Lives, thinks there is
no difference between a scholastic life and a voluptuous one. I will
set down here his very words: "They who are of opinion that a scholastic
life is from the very beginning most suitable to philosophers seem to me
to be in an error, thinking that men ought to follow this for the sake
of some recreation or some other thing like to it, and in that manner
to spin out the whole course of their life; that is, if it may be
explained, to live at ease. For this opinion of theirs is not to be
concealed, many of them delivering it clearly, and not a few more
obscurely." Who therefore did more grow old in this scholastic life than
Chrysippus, Cleanthes, Diogenes, Zeno, and Antipater, who left their
countries not out of any discontent but that they might quietly enjoy
their delight, studying, and disputing at their leisure. To verify
which, Aristocreon, the disciple and intimate friend of Chrysippus,
having erected his statue of brass upon a pillar, engraved on it these
verses:--

This brazen statue Aristocreon
To's friend Chrysippus newly here has put,
Whose sharp-edged wit, like sword of champion,
Did Academic knots in sunder cut.

Such a one then was Chrysippus, an old man, a philosopher, one who
praised the regal and civil life, and thought there was no difference
between a scholastic and voluptuous one.

But those others of them who intermeddle in state affairs act yet more
contradictorily to their own doctrines. For they govern, judge, consult,
make laws, punish, and honor, as if those were indeed cities in the
government of which they concern themselves, those truly counsellors and
judges who are at any time allotted to such offices, those gene