Conduct me, Zeus, and thou, O Destiny,

Wherever your decrees have fixed my lot.

I follow cheerfully; and, did I not,

Wicked and wretched, I must follow still.[8]

Who’er yields properly to Fate is deemed

Wise among men, and knows the laws of Heaven.[9]

And this third:

“O Crito, if it thus pleases the gods, thus let it be.”[10]

“Anytus and Melitus may kill me indeed; but hurt me they cannot.”[11]


Footnotes

[1]Happiness, the effect of virtue, is the mark which God has set up for us to aim at. Our missing it is no work of His; nor so properly anything real, as a mere negative and failure of our own.
[2][Chapter XV of the third book of the Discourses, which, with the exception of some very trifling differences, is the same as chapter XXIX of the Enchiridion.—Ed.]
[3]Euphrates was a philosopher of Syria, whose character is described, with the highest encomiums, by Pliny the Younger, Letters I. 10.
[4][The two inimical sons of Oedipus, who killed each other in battle.—Ed.]
[5][This refers to an anecdote given in full by Simplicius, in his commentary on this passage, of a man assaulted and killed on his way to consult the oracle, while his companion, deserting him, took refuge in the temple till cast out by the Deity.—Tr.]
[6][Reference is to Zeno of Cyprus (335-263 B.C.), the founder of the Stoic school.—Ed.]
[7][Chrysippus (c. 280-207 B.C.) was a Stoic philosopher who became head of the Stoa after Cleanthes. His works, which are lost, were most influential and were generally accepted as the authoritative interpretation of orthodox Stoic philosophy.—Ed.]
[8]Cleanthes, in Diogenes Laertius, quoted also by Seneca, Epistle 107.
[9]Euripides, Fragments.
[10]Plato, Crito, Chap. XVII.
[11]Plato, Apology, Chap. XVIII.


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