Tiribazus, they say, when an attempt was made by the Persians to arrest him,
drew his sword, being a man of great strength, and fought desperately. But
when the men protested and cried out that they were arresting him by the
King's command, he instantly threw down his sword and held out his hands to
be bound.
1 Is not what actually happens just like this ? The rest of men
fight desperately against misfortunes, and force their way through
difficulties, contriving for themselves means to escape and avert things
undesired ; but the superstitious man, without a word from anybody, says all
to himself, ‘This you have to undergo, poor soul, by the dispensation
of Providence and by God's command,’ and casts away all hope,
gives himself up, runs away, and repulses those who would help him.
Many ills of no great moment are made to result fatally by men's
superstition. Midas of old, dispirited and disturbed, as it appears, as the
result of some dreams, reached such a state of mind that he committed
suicide by drinking bull's blood.
2 And Aristodemus, king of the Messenians
in the war against the Spartans, when dogs howled like wolves, and
quitch-grass began to grow around his ancestral
[p. 479] hearth, and the seers were alarmed by these signs, lost
heart and hope by his forebodings, and slew himself by his own hand.
3 It
would perhaps have been the best thing in the world for Nicias, general of
the Athenians, to have got rid of his superstition in the same way as Midas
and Aristodemus,rather than to be affrighted at the shadow on the moon in
eclipse and sit inactive while the enemy's wall was being built around him,
and later to fall into their hands together with forty thousand men, who
were either slain or captured alive, and himself meet an inglorious end.
4
For the obstruction of light caused by the earth's coming between sun and
moon is nothing frightful, nor is the meeting of a shadow with the moon at
the proper time in its revolutions anything frightful, but frightful is the
darkness of superstition falling upon man, and confounding and blinding his
power to reason in circumstances that most loudly demand the power to
reason.
Glaucus, see, the mighty ocean Even now with billows roars, Round
about the Gyrian summits Sheer in air a dark cloud soars, Sign of storm . .
. ;5
when the pilot sees this, he prays that he may escape the storm, and
calls upon the Saviours,
6 but while he is praying he throws the helm over,
lowers the yard, and
[p. 481]
Furling the big main sail, Hastens to make his escape
Out from the murky sea.7
Hesiod advises
8 that the farmer before ploughing
and sowing should Pray to Zeus of the world below and to holy Demeter with
his hand on the plough-handle ; and Homer says
9 that Ajax, as he was about
to engage in single combat with Hector, bade the Greeks pray to the gods for
him, and then, while they were praying, donned his armour; and when
Agamemnon enjoined
10 on the fighting men,
See that each spear is well
sharpened, and each man's shield in good order,
at the same time he asked in
prayer from Zeus,
Grant that I raze to the level of earth the palace of
Priam;11
for God is brave hope, not cowardly excuse. But the Jews,
12 because
it was the Sabbath day, sat in their places immovable, while the enemy were
planting ladders against the walls and capturing the defences, and they did
not get up, but remained there, fast bound in the toils of superstition as
in one great net.
