Between Heathenism and Christianity - College of Stoic Philosophers

The Delay of the Deity
vices, He administers to each person chastisements
as medicaments, but not equally severe in all
nor at one and the same time.
cases
For that the healing
art when applied to the soul is called right and right
eousness and is the greatest of all arts, Pindar in addi
tion to thousands of others, affirms, when he calls God
the ruler and custodian of the whole universe, the
master builder, for the reason that He is the guard
ian of justice according to which it shall be de
termined when and how and to what degree every
wicked man is to be punished. And of this art Plato
says that Minos the son of Jove was a student, as it
is not possible to properly dispense justice, or to
recognize what is just unless one has learned and
acquired a knowledge of the same. Not even the
laws that men enact have always their clear and
plain justification and some enactments even seem at
first sight ridiculous. For instance, in Lacedaemon,
the ephors, immediately upon taking office, issue an
edict that no one is to wear a mustache and that
the laws are to be obeyed in order that none may feel
their severity. The Romans inflict a slight blow
with a twig upon those whom they intend to emanci
pate; and when they make a will
they bequeath their
property to some persons as their heirs, but sell it to
others, which seems to be absurd. But most absurd one
would think the law of Solon to be to the effect that
he shall
be deprived of civil rights, who, when there
are parties and factions in the state,
take sides with
neither. In short, one could name many anomalies
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