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"The Buried Classic" from Ancient Greece,
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Web Publication by
Mountain Man Graphics, Australia
in the Southern Spring of 1995
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"The Buried Classic" from Ancient Greece,
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Web Publication by
Mountain Man Graphics, Australia
in the Southern Spring of 1995
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"You then, O king, must attend to the business of state, but let me go and devote this hour to the Sun, for I must needs offer up to him my accustomed prayer."
"And I pray he may hear your prayer," said the king, "for he will bestow his grace on all who find pleasure in your wisdom; but I will wait for you until you return for I have to decide some cases in which your presence will very greatly help me."
Apollonius then returned, when the day was already for advanced and asked the king about the cases which he was judging; the king answered: "Today I have not judged any, for the omens did not allow me."
Apollonius then replied and said: "It is the case then that you consult the omens in such cases as these, just as you do when you are setting out on a journey or a campaign."
"Yes, by Zeus," he said, "for there is a risk in this case of one who is a judge straying from the right line."
Apollonius felt that what he said was true, and asked him again what the suit was wich he had to decide; "For I see," he said, "that you have given your attention to it and are perplexed what verdict to give."
"I admit," said the king, "that I am perplexed; and that is why I want your advice; for one man has sold to another land, in which there lay a trreasure as yet undiscovered, and some time afterwards the land, being broken up, revealed a certain chest, which the person who sold the land says belongs to him rather than the other, for that he would never have sold the land, if he had known beforehand that he had a fortune thereon; but the purchaser claims that he acquired everything that he found in land, which thenceforth was his. And, both their contentions are just; and I shall seem ridiculous if I order them to share the gold between them, for any old woman could settle the matter in that way."
Apollonius thereupon replied as follows:
"The fact that they are quarrelling about gold shows that these two men are no philosophers; and you will, in my opinion, give the best verdict if you bear this in mind, that the gods attach the first importance and have most care for those who live a life of philosophy together with moral excellence, and only pay secondary attention to those who have committed no faults and were never found unjust.
Now they entrust to philosophers the taks of rightly discerning things divine and human as they should be discerned, but to those who merely re of good character they give enought to live upon, so hat they may never be rendered unjust by actual lack of the necessaries of life.
It seems then to me, O king, right to weight these men in the balance, as it were, and to examine their respective lives; for I cannot believe that the gods would deprive the one even of this land, unless he was a bad man, or that they would, on the other hand, bestow on the other even what was under the land, unless he was better than the man who sold it."
The two claimants came back the next day, and the seller was convicted of being a ruffian who had neglected the sacrifices, which it was his bounden duty to sacrifice to the gods on that land; but the other was found to be a decent man and a most devout worshipper of the gods. Accordingly, the opinion of Apollonius prevailed, and the better of the two men quitted the court as one on whom the gods had bestowed this boon.
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"The Buried Classic" from Ancient Greece,
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Web Publication by
Mountain Man Graphics, Australia
in the Southern Spring of 1995
|