HKB
tyrant cut a man's throat in six months, but a fever will often be a year killing him. All these things are but noise, and a clatter of empty names.
But let us do as in setting out on a voyage. What is it possible for me to do? This--to choose the captain, crew, the day, the opportunity. Then a tempest has burst upon us; but what doth it concern me? I have left nothing undone that was mine to do; the problem is now another's, to wit, the captain's. But now the ship is sinking! and what have I to do? I do only what I am able--drown without terror and screaming and accusing of God, but knowing that that which has come into being must also perish. For I am no Immortal, but a man, a part of the sum of things as an hour is of the day. Like the hour, I must arrive, and, like the hour, pass away. What, then, can it matter to me how I pass away--whether by drowning or by a fever? for pass I must, even by some such thing. Now, this is what you shall see done by skillful ball-players. None careth for the ball as it were a thing good or bad; but only about throwing it and catching it. In this, then, there is rule, in this art, quickness, judgment: so that I may fail of catching the ball, even if I spread out my lap, and another, if I throw it, may catch it. But if I am anxious and nervous as I catch and throw, what kind of play is this? how shall one be steady? how shall he observe the order of the game? One will call "Throw," "Do not throw," and another, "You have thrown once." But this is strife and not play.
Thus Socrates knew how to play ball. How? When he jested in the court of justice. "Tell me, Anytus," he said, "how say you that I believe there is no God? The Daemons, who are they, think you? Are they not sons of God, or a mixed nature between Gods and men?" And when this was admitted--"Who, do you think, can hold that mules exist, but not asses?"[2] And thus he played with the ball. And what was the ball that was there thrown about among them? Life, chains, exile, a draught of poison, to be torn from a wife, to leave children orphans. These were the things among them that they played withal; yet none the less did he play, and flung the ball with proper grace and measure. And so should we do also, having the carefulness of the most zealous players, and yet indifference, as were it merely about a ball.