Translated by P.E. Matheson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916)
Sonnet 4.6 Summary
Sonnet 4.6 Summary
Two brief points. First: mislocating the good carries automatic penalties built into the nature of things. Place your good in externals — envy, desire, flattery, and distraction follow necessarily. Place your evil in externals — distress, lamentation, and misfortune follow. These aren't punishments imposed from outside; they're the natural consequences of the wrong valuation. We suffer them constantly and still don't change.
Second: the obligations of hospitality toward strangers, fathers, and brothers all derive from Zeus — Zeus as protector of guests, Zeus as god of fathers and kindred. Every relationship has a divine backing that makes its claims independent of whether the particular person deserves them.
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THERE are certain punishments ordained as it were by law for those who disobey the government of God. Whoever judges anything to be good except what depends upon the will, let him be liable to envy, desire, flattery, distraction. Whoever judges anything else to be evil (save acts of the will), let distress be his, and mourning, lamentation, misfortune. And yet, though we suffer punishments so severe, we cannot refrain.
Remember what the poet says about the stranger:
Stranger, though baser man than thou should come,
He must be honoured, for the hand of Zeus
Guards stranger folk and poor.
[Homer, Odyssey, XIV. 56]
One should be ready to apply this to a father: 'Though a baser one than thou should come, I may not dishonour a father; for all depend on Zeus, God of our fathers', and to a brother, 'for all depend on Zeus, God of kindred'. In the same way we shall find that Zeus is Protector of all other relations of life.