2
Euripides’s Iolaus of a feeble, superannuated old man, by means of a certain prayer, became on a sudden youthful and strong for battle; but the Stoics’ wise man was yesterday most detestable and the worst of villains, but today is changed on a sudden into a state of virtue, and is become of a wrinkled, pale fellow, and, as Aeschylus speaks, Of an old sickly wretch with stitch in’s back, Distent with rending pains as on a rack, a gallant, god-like, and beauteous person.
3
The Goddess Minerva took from Ulysses his wrinkles, baldness, and deformity, to make him appear a handsome man. But these men’s wise man, though old age quits not his body, but contrariwise still lays on and heaps more upon it, though he remains (for instance) hump-backed, toothless, one-eyed, is yet neither deformed, disfigured, nor ill-favored. For as beetles are said to relinquish perfumes and to pursue after ill scents; so Stoical love, having used itself to the most foul and deformed persons, if by means of philosophy they change into good form and comeliness, becomes presently disgusted.
