not he who is prostrate can be
laid prostrate, so the force of circumstances can only overpower him
who, at some time or other, has resources, and not him who is at
all times helpless. The descent of a great storm may make the pilot
helpless, or the severity of the season the husbandman or the physician;
for the good may become bad, as another poet witnesses:--

'The good are sometimes good and sometimes bad.'

But the bad does not become bad; he is always bad. So that when the
force of circumstances overpowers the man of resources and skill and
virtue, then he cannot help being bad. And you, Pittacus, are saying,
'Hard is it to be good.' Now there is a difficulty in becoming good; and
yet this is possible: but to be good is an impossibility--

'For he who does well is the good man, and he who does ill is the bad.'

But what sort of doing is good in letters? and what sort of doing makes
a man good in letters? Clearly the knowing of them. And what sort of
well-doing makes a man a good physician? Clearly the knowledge of the
art of healing the sick. 'But he who does ill is the bad.' Now who
becomes a bad physician? Clearly he who is in the first place a
physician, and in the second place a good physician; for he may become a
bad one also: but none of us unskilled individuals can by any amount of
doing ill become physicians, any more than we can become carpenters or
anything of that sort; and he who by doing ill cannot become a physician
at all, clearly cannot become a bad physician. In like manner the good
may become deteriorated by time, or toil, or disease, or other accident
(the only real doing ill is to be deprived of knowledge), but the bad
man will never become bad, for he is always bad; and if he were to
become bad, he must previously have been good. Thus the words of the
poem tend to show that on the one hand a man cannot be continuously
good, but that he may become good and may also become bad; and again
that

'They are the best for the longest time whom the gods love.'

All this relates to Pittacus, as is further proved by the sequel. For he
adds:--

'Therefore I will not throw away my span of life to no purpose in
searching after the impossible, hoping in vain to find a perfectly
faultless man among those who partake of the fruit of the broad-bosomed
earth: if I find him, I will send you word.'

(this is the vehement way in which he pursues his attack upon Pittacus
throughout the whole poem):

'But h