norantly become wise." And going
on, he says that it is convenient for the wicked also to continue in
life. And afterwards thus, word for word: "First, as virtue, barely
taken, has nothing towards our living, so neither has vice anything to
oblige us to depart." Nor is it necessary to turn over other books,
that we may show Chrysippus's contradictoriness to himself; but in
these same, he sometimes with commendation brings forth this saying of
Antisthenes, that either understanding or a halter is to be provided, as
also that of Tyrtaeus,

Come nigh the bounds of virtue or of death.

Now what else will this show, but that to wicked men and fools not to
live is more profitable than to live? And sometimes correcting Theognis,
he says, that the poet should not have written,

From poverty to fly;--

but rather thus,

From wickedness to fly, into the deep
Throw thyself, Cyrnus, or from rocks so steep.
(See "Theognis," vs. 175.)

What therefore else does he seem to do, but to set down himself those
things and doctrines which, when others write them, he expunges;
condemning, indeed, Plato for showing that not to live is better than
to live viciously and ignorantly; and yet advising Theognis to let a man
break his neck or throw himself into the sea, that he may avoid vice?
For having praised Antisthenes for directing fools to an halter, he
again blames him, saying that vice has nothing that should oblige us to
depart out of life.

Moreover, in his books against the same Plato, concerning Justice, he
immediately at the very beginning leaps into a discourse touching the
gods, and says, that Cephalus did not rightly avert men from injustice
by the fear of the gods, and that his teaching is easily refuted,
and that it affords to the contrary many arguments and probabilities
impugning the discourse concerning divine punishments, as nothing
differing from the tales of Acco and Alphito (or Raw-Head and
Bloody-Bones), with which women are wont to frighten little children
from their unlucky pranks. Having thus traduced Plato, he in other
places again praises him, and often alleges this saying of Euripides:--

Howe'er you may deride it, there's a Jove,
With other gods, who sees men's ills above.

And likewise, in his First Book of Justice citing these verses of
Hesiod,

Then Jove from heaven punishments did send,
And plague and famine brought them to their end,
("Works and Da