De Stoicorum repugnantiis

Such indeed he frequently is; but in his disputations against others he takes not the least care of speaking things contrary and dissonant to himself. For in his books of Exhorting, reprehending Plato, who said, that to him who has neither learned nor knows how to live it is profitable not to live, he speaks in this manner: For this speech is both repugnant to itself, and not at all persuasive. For first insinuating that it is best for us not to live, and in a sort counselling us to die, he will excite us rather to any thing else than to be philosophers; for neither can he who does not live philosophize, nor he who shall live long wickedly and ignorantly become wise. And going on, he says that it is convenient for the wicked also to continue in life. And afterwards thus, word for word: First, as virtue, barely taken, has nothing towards our living, so neither has vice any thing to oblige us to depart. Nor is it necessary to turn over other books, that we may show Chrysippus’s contradictoriness to himself; but in these same, he sometimes with commendation brings forth this saying of Antisthenes, that either understanding or a halter is to be provided, as also that of Tyrtaeus,

Come nigh the bounds of virtue or of death.

Now what else will this show, but that to wicked men and fools not to live is more profitable than to live? And sometimes correcting Theognis, he says, that the poet should not have written,

From poverty to fly;—

but rather thus,

From wickedness to fly, into the deep

Throw thyself, Cyrnus, or from rocks so steep.

[*](See Theognis, vs. 175.)

What therefore else does he seem to do, but to set down

himself those things and doctrines which, when others write them, he expunges; condemning, indeed, Plato for showing that not to live is better than to live viciously and ignorantly; and yet counselling Theognis to let a man break his neck or throw himself into the sea, that he may avoid vice? For having praised Antisthenes for directing fools to an halter, he again blames him, saying that vice has nothing that should oblige us to depart out of life.