carnation,lily,lily,rose1

“Again, one time Sophocles, who was Pericles’ fellow-commissioner in the generalship, was going on board with him, and praised the beauty of a youth they met with on the way to the ship. ‘Sophocles,’ said he, ‘a general ought not only to have clean hands but also clean eyes’.”
Plutarch, Life of Pericles

Just what was Pericles’ point? Is there something wrong with praising the beauty of a youth? In some sense, surely not.

But Plutarch relates this story as part of his portrait of Pericles as an upright man. The reader is to conclude that this incident reveals some aspect of Pericles’ good character.

There must have been something in how Sophocles pointed out the beauty of the youth. For there is a way of looking that is actually a way of taking. Just as hands can take what is not their own—and thus be unclean, so can eyes.

Eyes are designed to see. But as a matter of righteousness, and for the sake of seeing, some things should not be looked upon. From some things we need to withhold our glance. Somehow to look upon these things—as an act of selfish grasping—blinds us. It takes away our power to see and to love things as they really are.

Only if we discipline our eyes, if we are willing not to grasp through looking, will we ever really be able to see, and to appreciate, the beauty of others.

Plutarch (46-120 A.D.), a Boeotian Greek who became a Roman citizen, was especially known as a biographer of famous Greek and Roman men.
Pericles (495-429 B.C.), a great general, statesman, and orator, ruled Athens during its Golden Age. Several of his speeches are recorded by Thucydides (460-395 B.C.) in his History of the Peloponnesian War.

Image: “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose” by John Singer Sargent

Originally posted at Bacon from Acorns

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John Cuddeback
John A. Cuddeback is a professor and chairman of the Philosophy Department at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia, where he has taught since 1995. He received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from The Catholic University of America under the direction of F. Russell Hittinger. He has lectured on various topics including virtue, culture, natural law, friendship, and household. His book Friendship: The Art of Happiness was republished in 2010 as True Friendship: Where Virtue Becomes Happiness. His writings have appeared in Nova et Vetera, The Thomist, and The Review of Metaphysics, as well as in several volumes published by the American Maritain Association. Though raised in what he calls an ‘archetypical suburb,’ Columbia, Maryland, he and his wife Sofia consider themselves blessed to be raising their six children in the shadow of the Blue Ridge on the banks of the Shenandoah. At the material center of their homesteading projects are heritage breed pigs, which like the pigs of Eumaeus are fattened on acorns, yielding a bacon that too few people ever enjoy. His website dedicated to the philosophy of family and household is baconfromacorns.com.