Everything based on compulsion is held slavish among the intelligent.
πᾶν τοὐξ ἀνάγκης δοῦλόν ἐστ᾽ ἐν τοῖς σοφοῖς.
as hinted by "among the intelligent", this echoes contemporary sophists' arguments. Cf. Democr. DK 68 B 181 (conviction a better guarantor of morality than law /compulsion; cf. Critias TrGF 43 F 11, 19.5 ff.); Pl. Gorg. 483b ff. (law an artificial curb on nature); Rep. 338e ff., Xen. Mem. 1.2.40-6 (law = compulsion by the stronger).
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Sunday, January 07, 2024
Compulsion
Euripides, Orestes 488 (tr. M.L. West, with his note):