e important than they themselves deem them,
and his own favours to them less than theirs to him, will have their
good-will in the intercourse of life. And surely in his relations to the
state and his fellow citizens, he is by far the best, who rather than
the Olympic or any other victory of peace or war, desires to win the
palm of obedience to the laws of his country, and who, of all mankind,
is the person reputed to have obeyed them best through life. In his
relations to strangers, a man should consider that a contract is a
most holy thing, and that all concerns and wrongs of strangers are
more directly dependent on the protection of God, than wrongs done to
citizens; for the stranger, having no kindred and friends, is more to be
pitied by Gods and men. Wherefore, also, he who is most able to avenge
him is most zealous in his cause; and he who is most able is the genius
and the god of the stranger, who follow in the train of Zeus, the god
of strangers. And for this reason, he who has a spark of caution in
him, will do his best to pass through life without sinning against
the stranger. And of offences committed, whether against strangers or
fellow-countrymen, that against suppliants is the greatest. For the God
who witnessed to the agreement made with the suppliant, becomes in a
special manner the guardian of the sufferer; and he will certainly not
suffer unavenged.

Thus we have fairly described the manner in which a man is to act about
his parents, and himself, and his own affairs; and in relation to the
state, and his friends, and kindred, both in what concerns his own
countrymen, and in what concerns the stranger. We will now consider what
manner of man he must be who would best pass through life in respect of
those other things which are not matters of law, but of praise and
blame only; in which praise and blame educate a man, and make him more
tractable and amenable to the laws which are about to be imposed.

Truth is the beginning of every good thing, both to Gods and men; and he
who would be blessed and happy, should be from the first a partaker of
the truth, that he may live a true man as long as possible, for then
he can be trusted; but he is not to be trusted who loves voluntary
falsehood, and he who loves involuntary falsehood is a fool. Neither
condition is enviable, for the untrustworthy and ignorant has no friend,
and as time advances he becomes known, and lays up in store for himself
isolation in crabbe