sness of tutors or
want of obedience to preceptors; but the faults of young men are often
grave and serious, as gluttony, and robbing their fathers, and dice, and
revellings, and drinking-bouts, and deflowering of maidens, and seducing
of married women. Such outbreaks ought to be carefully checked and
curbed. For that prime of life is prodigal in pleasure, and frisky, and
needs a bridle, so that those parents who do not strongly check that
period, are foolishly, if unawares, giving their youths license for
vice.[34] Sensible parents, therefore, ought during all that period to
guard and watch and restrain their youths, by precepts, by threats, by
entreaties, by advice, by promises, by citing examples,[35] on the one
hand, of those who have come to ruin by being too fond of pleasure, on
the other hand, of those who by their self-control have attained to
praise and good report. For these are, as it were, the two elements of
virtue, hope of honour, and fear of punishment; the former inciting to
good practices, the latter deterring from bad.

Sec. XVII. We ought, at all hazards, to keep our boys also from association
with bad men, for they will catch some of their villany. This was the
meaning of Pythagoras' enigmatical precepts, which I shall quote and
explain, as they give no slight momentum towards the acquisition of
virtue: as, _Do not touch black tails_: that is, do not associate with
bad men.[36] _Do not go beyond the balance_: that is, we must pay the
greatest attention to justice and not go beyond it. _Do not sit on a
measure_: that is, do not be lazy, but earn tomorrow's bread as well as
to-day's. _Do not give everyone your right hand_: that is, do not be too
ready to strike up a friendship. _Do not wear a tight ring_: that is,
let your life be free, do not bind yourself by a chain. _Do not poke the
fire with a sword_: that is, do not provoke an angry person, but yield
to such. _Do not eat the heart_: do not wear away the heart by anxiety.
_Abstain from beans_: that is, do not meddle in state affairs, for the
voting for offices was formerly taken by beans. _Do not put your food in
the chamber-pot_: that is, do not throw your pearls before swine, for
words are the food of the mind, and the villany of men twist them to a
corrupt meaning. _When you have come to the end of a journey do not look
back_: that is, when people are going to die and see that their end is
near, they ought to take it easily and not be dejected. B