He should know all the combinations which occur in life--of beauty with poverty or with wealth,--of knowledge with external goods,--and at last choose with reference to the nature of the soul, regarding that only as the better life which makes men better, and leaving the rest.

And a man must take with him an iron sense of truth and right into the world below, that there too he may remain undazzled by wealth or the allurements of evil, and be determined to avoid the extremes and choose the mean.

For this, as the messenger reported the interpreter to have said, is the true happiness of man; and any one, as he proclaimed, may, if he choose with understanding, have a good lot, even though he come last.

'Let not the first be careless in his choice, nor the last despair.' He spoke; and when he had spoken, he who had drawn the first lot chose a tyranny: he did not see that he was fated to devour his own children--and when he discovered his mistake, he wept and beat his breast, blaming chance and the Gods and anybody rather than himself.

He was one of those who had come from heaven, and in his previous life had been a citizen of a well-ordered State, but he had only habit and no philosophy.