Kitap 7
2
Again, when impulses are natural, it is more excusable to follow them, since even with the desires it is more excusable to follow those that are common to all men, and in so far as they are common. But anger and bad temper are more natural than desire for excessive and unnecessary pleasures; witness the man who was had up for beating his father and who said in his defence, “Well, my father used to beat his father, and he used to beat his, and (pointing to his little boy) so will my son here beat me when he grows up; it runs in our family”; and the man who, when his son was throwing him out of the house, used to beg him to stop when he got to the door, because he only used to drag his father as far as that.This story is developed in Robert Browning’s poem Halbert and Hob ; it is said also to occur in a German Volkslied.
2
Again, the craftier men are, the more Unjust they are.
3
Now the hot-tempered man is not crafty, nor is anger, but open; whereas desire is crafty, as they say of Aphrodite: Weaver of wiles in Cyprus bornThe line seems to have ended Κυπρογένεος πρόπολον (Bergk, cf. Hesych., K. π. προαγ〈ω〉γόν) , for the servant of the wile-weaving Cyprus-born, viz., Peitho, Persuasion. It is ascribed by Wilamowitz to Sappho, and the same epithet is applied to Aphrodite in Sappho, 1.2. and Homer writes of her broidered girdle CajoleryOne of the emblematic figures embroidered on the girdle of Aphrodite, Hom. Il. 14.217. that cheats the wisest wits.
