Meditations IV.16

Ere ten days are past, thou shalt rank as a god with them that hold thee now a wild-beast or an ape,²⁷ if thou but turn back to thy axioms and thy reverence of reason.

• 27.There was a Greek proverb: ἢ θεὸς ἢ θηρίον (Aristotle’s Politics i. 2, Ethics vii. 1). Plutarch’s On Stoic Self-Contradictions speaks of conversion by philosophy from a θηρίον to a θεός. See Justin Martyr’s clever application of this proverb, Apology i. 24.

  The proverb is ē theos ē thērion, “either a god or a beast”; in the Politics Aristotle says that a being who cannot live in a city is either a beast or a god. Plutarch’s On Stoic Self-Contradictions is his polemic on inconsistencies in Stoic doctrine.