opinions are right, make the will good: but perverse
and distorted opinions make the will bad. God has fixed this law, and
says, "If you would have anything good, receive it from yourself." You
say, No, but I will have it from another. Do not so: but receive it from
yourself. Therefore when the tyrant threatens and calls me, I say, Whom
do you threaten? If he says, I will put you in chains, I say, You
threaten my hands and my feet. If he says, I will cut off your head, I
reply, You threaten my head. If he says, I will throw you into prison, I
say, You threaten the whole of this poor body. If he threatens me with
banishment, I say the same. Does he then not threaten you at all? If I
feel that all these things do not concern me, he does not threaten me at
all; but if I fear any of them, it is I whom he threatens. Whom then do
I fear? the master of what? The master of things which are in my own
power? There is no such master. Do I fear the master of things which are
not in my power? And what are these things to me?

Do you philosophers then teach us to despise kings? I hope not. Who
among us teaches to claim against them the power over things which they
possess? Take my poor body, take my property, take my reputation, take
those who are about me. If I advise any persons to claim these things,
they may truly accuse me. Yes, but I intend to command your opinions
also. And who has given you this power? How can you conquer the opinion
of another man? By applying terror to it, he replies, I will conquer it.
Do you not know that opinion conquers itself, and is not conquered by
another? But nothing else can conquer will except the will itself. For
this reason too the law of God is most powerful and most just, which is
this: Let the stronger always be superior to the weaker. Ten are
stronger than one. For what? For putting in chains, for killing, for
dragging whither they choose, for taking away what a man has. The ten
therefore conquer the one in this in which they are stronger. In what
then are the ten weaker? If the one possesses right opinions and the
others do not. Well then, can the ten conquer in this matter? How is it
possible? If we were placed in the scales, must not the heavier draw
down the scale in which it is.

How strange then that Socrates should have been so treated by the
Athenians. Slave, why do you say Socrates? Speak of the thing as it is:
how strange that the poor body of Socrates should have been carried off