39
Whoever you are that would live apart from slaves, deliver yourself from slavery. And you will be free if you deliver yourself from appetite. For neither was Aristides called just, nor Epaminondas divine, nor Lycurgus a preserver, because they were rich and slave-holders; but because, being poor, they delivered Greece from slavery.
40
If you would have your house securely inhabited, imitate the Spartan Lycurgus. And as he did not enclose his city with walls, but fortified the inhabitants with virtue, and preserved the city always free; so do you, likewise, not surround yourself with a great court-yard, nor raise high towers, but strengthen those who live with you by benevolence and fidelity and friendship. And thus nothing hurtful will enter, even if the whole band of wickedness be set in array against it.
41
Do not hang your house round with tablets and pictures, but adorn it with virtue. For those are merely foreign and a fading deception of the eyes; but this, a congenial and indelible and perpetual ornament to the house.
42
Instead of herds of oxen, endeavor to assemble flocks of friends about your house.
43
As a wolf resembles a dog, so much does a flatterer, an adulterer, a parasite, resemble a friend. Take heed, therefore, that instead of guardian dogs, you do not inadvertently admit ravening wolves.
