Note 193 — Chapter III · * OTHER COMPANIONS OF SOKRATES. (continued 2)

It is this servitude of political life, making the politician the slave of persons and circumstances around him, which Horace contrasts with the philosophical independence of Aristippus:—

Ac ne forté roges, quo me duce, quo lare tuter; Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri Quo me cunque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes. Nunc agilis fio et mersor civilibus undis, Virtutis veræ custos rigidusque satelles: Nunc in Aristippi furtim præcepta relabor, Et mihi res, non me rebus, subjungere conor. (Epist. i. 1, 15.)

So also the Platonic Sokrates (Theætêt. pp. 172-175) depicts forcibly the cramped and fettered lives of rhetors and politicians; contrasting them with the self-judgment and independence of speculative and philosophical enquirers — ὡς οἰκέται πρὸς ἐλευθέρους τεθράφθαι — ὁ μὲν τῷ ὄντι ἐν ἐλευθερίᾳ τε καὶ σχολῇ τεθραμμένος, ὃν δὴ φιλόσοφον καλεῖς.