From body to Body; from soul to Soul; from intellect to Intellect; from life to Life; from being to Being; from the One.

You may be unconquerable, if you enter into no combat in which it is not in your own control to conquer.

Epictetus, The Handbook, 19

Our intention in pursuing these mysteries is no other than by logical energies of our reason to arrive at the simple intellection of beings, and by these to excite the divine one resident in the depths of our essence, or rather which presides over our essence, that we may perceive the simple and incomprehensible One. For after, through discursive energies and intellections, we have properly denied of the first principle all conditions peculiar to beings, there will be some danger, lest, deceived by imagination after numerous negations, we should think that we have arrived either at nothing, or at something slender and vain, indeterminate, formless, and confused; unless we are careful in proportion as we advance in negations to excite by a certain amatorial affection the divine vigor of our unity; trusting that by this means we may enjoy divine unity, when we have dismissed the motion of reason and the multiplicity of intelligence, and tend through unity alone to The One itself, and through love to the supreme and ineffable Good.

Proclus, Commentary on the Parmenides

Remember, that it is not he who gives ill language or a blow who insults, but the principle which represents these things. When, therefore, anyone provokes you, be assured that it is your own opinion which provokes you.

Epictetus, The Handbook, 20

The above quote from Proclus contains a key insight:

Though it is not possible to truly comprehend the One - which is the ultimate causal principle of everything, including divinity and the material cosmos - you can approach it by using the technique of negation. By determining what it cannot be, you can begin to glimpse what it is.

Delphic Maxims 20 - 27:

Embrace friendship.
Cling to education.
Pursue honor.
Be eager for wisdom.
Praise the good.
Find fault with no one.
Praise virtue.
Practice what is just.

Let death and exile, and all other things which appear terrible be daily before your eyes, but chiefly death, and you will never entertain any abject thought, nor too eagerly covet anything.

Epictetus, The Handbook, 21

“To live, indeed, is not in our power, but to live rightly is.” Quintus Sextius

Seneca writes of Sextius:

“All our senses ought to be trained to endurance. They are naturally long-suffering, if only the mind desists from weakening them. This should be summoned to give an account of itself every day. Sextius had this habit, and when the day was over and he had retired to his nightly rest, he would put these questions to his soul: ‘What bad habits have you cured today? What fault have you resisted? In what respect are you better?’ ... When the light has been removed from sight, and my wife, long aware of my habit, has become silent, I scan the whole of my day and retrace all my deeds and words. I conceal nothing from myself, I omit nothing.” Seneca, De Ira, III.XXXVI

Here we have another example of the practice of nightly self-examination.

Do you think that someone can consort with things he admires without imitating them? ... The philosopher, by consorting with what is ordered and divine and despite all the slanders around that say otherwise, himself becomes as divine and ordered as a human being can be.

Plato, The Republic, 500cd

If you have an earnest desire of attaining to philosophy, prepare yourself from the very first to be laughed at, to be sneered at by the multitude, to hear them say, “He is returned to us a philosopher all at once," and "Whence this supercilious look?" Now, for your part, don't have a supercilious look indeed; but keep steadily to those things which appear best to you as one appointed by God to this station. For remember that, if you adhere to the same point, those very persons who at first ridiculed will afterwards admire you. But if you are conquered by them, you will incur a double ridicule.

Epictetus, The Handbook, 22

What is our course and what is our means of flight?

We should not rely on our feet to get us there, for our feet just take us everywhere on earth, one place after another.

Nor should you saddle up a horse or prepare some sea-going vessel.

You should put aside all such things and stop looking; just shut your eyes, and change your way of looking, and wake up. Everyone has this ability but few use it.

Go into yourself and look. If you do not yet see yourself as beautiful, then be like a sculptor who, making a statue that is supposed to be beautiful, removes a part here and polishes a part there so that he makes the latter smooth and the former just right until he has given the statue a beautiful face. In the same way, you should remove superfluities and straighten things that are crooked, work on the things that are dark, making them bright, and not stop 'working on your statue' until the divine splendor of virtue shines in you, until you see 'Self-Control enthroned on the holy seat'.

If you have become this and have seen it and find yourself in a purified state, you have no impediment to becoming one in this way nor do you have something else mixed in with yourself, but you are entirely yourself, true light alone.

If you see that you have become this, at that moment you have become sight, and you can be confident about yourself, and you have at this moment ascended here, no longer in need of someone to show you. Just open your eyes and see, for this alone is the eye that sees the great beauty.

Plotinus, Ennead 1.6.8-9

If you ever happen to turn your attention to externals, so as to wish to please anyone, be assured that you have ruined your scheme of life. Be contented, then, in everything with being a philosopher; and, if you wish to be thought so likewise by anyone, appear so to yourself, and it will suffice you.

Epictetus, The Handbook, 23

He who does an injury is more unhappy than he who receives one.
It is the province of a magnanimous man to bear with mildness the errors of others.

The Golden Sentences of Democrates, 11-12

Don't allow such considerations as these distress you. "I will live in dishonor, and be nobody anywhere." For, if dishonor is an evil, you can no more be involved in any evil by the means of another, than be engaged in anything base. Is it any business of yours, then, to get power, or to be admitted to an entertainment? By no means. How, then, after all, is this a dishonor? And how is it true that you will be nobody anywhere, when you ought to be somebody in those things only which are in your own control, in which you may be of the greatest consequence?

Epictetus, The Handbook, 24

The Prometheus Trust, which publishes books on the Platonic tradition, will be hosting online studies of Plato’s dialogues. Their first meeting will be tomorrow at 6pm BST. See the link below for more information.

http://www.prometheustrust.co.uk/html/virtual_events.html

The classical virtues are Justice, Wisdom, Courage, and Self-control (or Temperance).

In the Platonic tradition, the latter three correspond to aspects of the soul.

Wisdom is the virtue of the mind.

Courage is the virtue of the Will (or passions).

Self-control is the virtue of the appetitive and desiring aspect of the soul.

Justice is the product of the correct ordering of the prior three virtues such that reason is the ruler of the will and the will is the ruler of the appetites.

The gods do not send evil to us - the gods are not evil and therefore cannot be responsible for evil. What seems to us to be evil is in fact our own dissimilarity to and distance from divinity. And so there is no need to propitiate or bribe the gods since they do not need anything, cannot possibly depend upon us for happiness, and cannot be bribed. Rather, it is we who need some means of approaching and aligning ourselves with divinity. This is accomplished by ritualistic imitation of the divine world and the destruction of our animal nature in the sacrifice. As explained by Sallust:

"This solves the question about sacrifices and other rites performed to the Gods. The divine itself is without needs, and the worship is paid for our own benefit. The providence of the Gods reaches everywhere and needs only some congruity for its reception. All congruity comes about by representation and likeness. For which reason, the temples are made in representation of heaven; the altar, of earth; the images, of life (that is why they are made like living things); the prayers, of the element of thought; the mystic letters, of the unspeakable celestial forces; the herbs and stones, of matter; and the sacrificial animals, of the irrational life in us. From all these things the Gods gain nothing; what gain could there be to God? It is we who gain some communion with them." Sallust, On the Gods and the World, XV

Has someone been given greater honor than you at a banquet or in a greeting or by being brought in to give advice? If these things are good, you should be glad that he has got them. If they are bad, do not be angry that you did not get them. And remember, you cannot demand an equal share if you did not do the same things... You will be unjust and greedy, then, if you want to obtain these things for free when you have not paid the price for which they are bought.

Epictetus, The Handbook, 25

Hierocles, who has transmitted [The Golden Verses of Pythagoras] to us with a long and masterly Commentary, assures us that they do not contain, as one might believe, the sentiment of one in particular, but the doctrine of all the sacred corps of Pythagoreans and the voice of all the assemblies. He adds that there existed a law which prescribed that each one, every morning upon rising and every evening upon retiring, should read these verses as the oracles of the Pythagorean school. One sees, in reality, by many passages from Cicero, Horace, Seneca, and other writers worthy of belief, that this law was still vigorously executed in their time.

Fabre d'Olivet, Examinations of the Golden Verses

The path of the philosopher is not a path for nerds. Socrates was respected for his fearlessness in war. Plato was a wrestler and emphasized physical training. The Golden Verses tell us to exercise and take care of our health.

If a good man sacrifices to the gods and keeps them constant company in his prayers and offerings and every kind of worship he can give them, this will be the best and noblest policy he can follow. ... The first weapon in our armory [to hit the target of piety] will be to honor the gods of the underworld next after those of Olympus, the patron-gods of the state... After these gods, a sensible man will worship the spirits, and after them the heroes. Next in priority will be rites celebrated according to law at private shrines dedicated to ancestral gods. Last come honors paid to living parents.

Plato, Laws, 716d-717b