When
it paints over, and apologizes for its pitiful criminalities; and endures
its false weights, and its adulterated food; dares not to decide
practically between good and evil, and can neither honor the one, nor
smite the other, but sneers at the good, as if it were hidden evil, and
consoles the evil with pious sympathy, and conserves it in the sugar of
its leaden heart,--the end is come.
119. The first sign, then, of Athena's presence with any people is that
they become warriors, and that the chief thought of every man of them is
to stand rightly in his rank, and not fail from his brother's side in
battle. Wealth, and pleasure, and even love, are all, under Athena's
orders, sacrificed to this duty of standing fast in the rank of war.
But further: Athena presides over industry, as well as battle; typically,
over women's industry; that brings comfort with pleasantness. Her word
to us all is: "Be well exercised, and rightly clothed. Clothed, and in
your right minds; not insane and in rags, nor in soiled fine clothes
clutched from each other's shoulders. Fight and weave.
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