CLASSICAL NOTES, 21 



That is to say, Horace is contrasting the Stoic, who is a missionary 

 and lives not for himself but for the world, and who accordingly is a 

 man of action and of affairs, with the Cyrenaic voluptuary, who 

 sacrifices everything for himself, and who regulates his dealings with 

 the world by the amount of pleasure to be extracted for himself 

 thei'efrom. The latter also, if it so chance, will be a man of action 

 and afiairs ; but if he is, it is only because he gets more enjoyment 

 from the life of action than from the quietist's life. Like the Chris- 

 tian, but in a very different sense, the Cyrenaic is " in the world 

 but not of it." 



So understood the passage is coherent and simple. Unfortunately 

 a good deal of misplaced ingenuity has been spent upon it till its 

 simplicity has been obscured. Meineke and others even wished to 

 transpose lines 19 and 17, and read : 



Et mihi res non me rebus subjungere conor 

 Virtutis verae custos rigidusque satelles, 

 Nunc in Aristippi, etc., 



while Dobree secured the same result awkwardly, though with less 

 violence, by changing non to nunc. They could not understand 

 how a Stoic, whose aim was to be independent of the world, could be 

 said to submit himself to it. And even Orelli escapes the same con- 

 clusion only by denying that the last line contains any reference to 

 Stoicism : the last line, he seems to say, is added to qualify and 

 minimize the preceding. Horace proclaims himself a Cyrenaic, but 

 hastens to add that, though he does not despise the good things of 

 this world, he is yet no slave to them. Interpreted to refer to 

 Stoicism, the last line is (he says) inconsistent with one of the articles 

 of the Stoic creed : ob 8sT npoffdyjxrjv aorov rwv kxrbq yiyveadat. aXk' 

 ixEtva aoTU) Tzpoffdetvat (Epict : 1, 4, 49). The inconsistency that 

 Orelli sees here is imaginary. Epictetus is saying that the Stoic is 

 not dependent upon worldly advantages or the creature of them : 

 Horace is saying that the Stoic works for the world's good and not 

 for his own pleasure ; the two propositions are perfectly compatible. 

 The only quotations concerning the Stoic creed which are to the 

 point here are the well known — 



Non sibi sed toti genitos se credere mundo 



<Lucau 2, 383, quoted by Obbar.) 



Nec sibi tantum sed universis singulisque consulendum. 



(Seneca de clem. : 2, 5 — Obbar.) 

 and " TzoXiTsbsadai tuv aofov." 



