24 definitions
The book's index
Cleanthes' Hymn to Zeus
24 concepts · 24 definitions
Destiny (n.) is to be followed without hesitating wherever it has assigned you — and if you have turned bad and do not want to, you will follow all the same.
Disorder (n.) is raw material for God: he knows how to make the uneven even and put the disorderly in order, and even what is unloved is dear to him.
Evil (n.) is the single exception to God's rule: no deed happens on earth, in heaven or at sea without him, except what bad people do in their folly.
Fate (n.) covers everything that happens, but not everything fated is providence — which leaves room for moral evil outside God's plan.
Folly (n.) wants the good but is carried now this way, now that, working hard for the very opposite of what it wants.
Good and evil (n.) have been fitted together by Zeus into one, so that a single everlasting reason runs through all things.
Pleasure (n.) is not natural and has no value for life; like cosmetics, it has no natural existence.
Resistance (n.) changes only how you arrive at your fate, not whether: the one who has turned bad and refuses still follows.
Ambition (n.) is a quarrelsome eagerness for glory — one of three roads by which fools rush past the good, the others being undisciplined profit and the pleasures of the body.
Gods (n.) are mystical figures and holy names.