|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: love-makings, as I described them. Like honours like loves, the pair
are of a piece.
For just as the ministrations won from loveless hearts[12] are felt to
be devoid of grace, and embraces forcibly procured are sweet no
longer, so the obsequious cringings of alarm are hardly honours. Since
how shall we assert that people who are forced to rise from their
seats do really rise to honour those whom they regard as malefactors?
or that these others who step aside to let their betters pass them in
the street, desire thus to show respect to miscreants?[13] And as to
gifts, it is notorious, people commonly bestow them largely upon those
they hate, and that too when their fears are gravest, hoping to avert
|
