Miscellanies in Prose and Verse

Some one may attempt it indeed, but the attempt will be ineffectual; for he is removed from the contact of inferior natures by so great an interval that he is beyond the reach of all harmful force. Hence, when potentates, kings, and men powerful by the consent of their subjects, attempt to hurt him, all their attacks fall as far short of the wise man as the arrows discharged by the Thracians fall short of the Olympian gods.

Or is it to be supposed that when that foolish king A reference to Xerxes, the Persian King who ordered the Hellespont to be whipped and threw chains into the sea. obscured the day by the multitude of his darts, that any arrow struck against the sun? Or that the chains which he threw into the deep could reach Neptune? As celestial natures escape human hands, and divinity is not hurt by those who plunder temples or destroy statues, in like manner, whatever is done against the wise man, insolently, petulantly, and proudly, is done in vain. But it may be said, it would be better that there should be no one who would wish to act in this manner. He who says this wishes for a thing very difficult for the human race—innocence. It is the concern of those who are about to do an injury to the wise man that it should not be done, and not his, who cannot suffer it, even if it were done. Perhaps, too, wisdom better exhibits its strength by being tranquil amidst attacks; just as the security of an emperor in the