Meditations VI.13

As in the case of meat and similar eatables the thought strikes us, this is the dead body of a fish, this of a fowl or pig; and again that this Falernian is merely the juice of a grape-cluster, and this purple-edged robe is nought but sheep’s wool¹⁵ steeped in the blood of a shell-fish; or, of sexual intercourse, that it is merely internal attrition and the spasmodic excretion of mucus¹⁶—such, I say, as are these impressions that get to grips with the actual things and enter into the heart of them, so as to see them as they really are, thus should it be thy life through, and where things look to be above measure convincing, laying them quite bare, behold their paltriness and strip off their conventional prestige. For conceit is a past master in fallacies and, when thou flatterest thyself most that thou art engaged in worthy tasks, then art thou most of all deluded by it. At any rate, see what Crates has to say about none other than Xenocrates.¹⁷

• 15.Compare Lucian’s Demonax § 41.

  In Lucian’s Demonax, the philosopher, seeing a man proud of the broad stripe on his robe, tells him that the cloth “did not make its original wearer anything but a sheep.”

• 16.Compare Tzetzes’ Chiliades vii. 801. He reads νευρίου for ἐντερίου.

  Tzetzes’ reading would replace enteriou, “of an entrail,” with neuriou, “of a sinew.”

• 17.It is not known what Marcus here refers to.

  Xenocrates was head of Plato’s Academy from 339 to 314 BC and was known for his austerity. Which Crates Marcus means, whether the Cynic of Thebes or the Academic philosopher of Athens, is uncertain.