Book 2
5.33
On hearing the line of Euripides’ play Auge where the poet says of virtue: ’Tis best to let her roam at will,This line, now found in Eur. Electra, 379, may have come into our text from the lost play Auge: cf. Nauck, T.G.F.2, p. 437, s.v. ΑΥΓΗ. he got up and left the theatre. For he said it was absurd to make a hue and cry about a slave who could not be found, and to allow virtue to perish in this way. Some one asked him whether he should marry or not, and received the reply, Whichever you do you will repent it. He used to express his astonishment that the sculptors of marble statues should take pains to make the block of marble into a perfect likeness of a man, and should take no pains about themselves lest they should turn out mere blocks, not men. He recommended to the young the constant use of the mirror, to the end that handsome men might acquire a corresponding behaviour, and ugly men conceal their defects by education.
