Ethics 207
he who is worthy of virtuous sexual love is [properly] worthy of sexual
love. They understand virtue exercised at a symposium as similar to
virtue in sexual matters, the one being knowledge which is concerned
with what is appropriate at a symposium, viz. of how one should run
symposia and how one should drink at them; and the other is knowledge
of how to hunt for talented young boys, which encourages them to
virtuous knowledge; and in general, knowledge of proper sexual activity.
That is why they say that the sensible man will engage in sexual activity.
And sexual activity just by itself is an indifferent, since at times it also
occurs among base men. But sexual love is not desire nor is it directed
at any base object, but is an effort to gain friendship resulting from the
appearance of beauty.
SblO. And they also say that the wise man does everything which he
does well; obviously. For in the sense that we say that the flute player
or kithara player does everything well, it being understood that we refer
to what the one does in his flute playing and the other in his kithara
playing, in the same sense we say that the prudent man does everything
well, both what he does and, by Zeus, what he does not do too.^44 For
they thought that the opinion that the wise man does everything well
follows from his accomplishing everything in accordance with right reason
and, as it were, in accordance with virtue, which is a craft concerned
with one's entire life. Analogously, the base man too does everything
which he does badly and in accordance with all the vices.
Sbll. They call 'practices' the love of music, of letters, of horses, of
hunting, and, broadly speaking, the so-called general crafts; they are not
knowledge, but they leave them in the class of virtuous conditions, and
consistently they say that only the wise man is a music lover and a lover
of letters, and analogously in the other cases. They give an outline
[definition] of a 'practice' as follows: a method using a craft or some part
[of a craft] which leads [us] to what is in accord with virtue.
5b12. They say that only the wise man is a good prophet and poet
and public speaker and dialectician and critic, but not every [wise man],
since some of these [crafts] also require a mastery of certain theorems.
And prophecy is a theoretical knowledge of signs significant for human
life given by the gods or daimons. The forms of prophecy are simi-
larly [described].
They say that only the wise man is a priest, but that no base man is.
- The text is corrupt here and we translate the emendation of Hense; with their own
emendation Long and Sedley (The Hellenistic Philosophers [Cambridge 1987] vol. 1, 61G1
p. 380) translate: "does everything well, so far as concerns what he does, and not of course
also what he does not do."