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- I turn to Heracles. We must not suppose he attained such power in those days as a result of his physical strength. Rather, he was a man of intellect, an initiate in heavenly wisdom, who, as it were, shed light on philosophy, which had been hidden in deep darkness. The most authoritative of the Stoics agree with this account.... The boar which he overcame is the common incontinence of men; the lion is the indiscriminate rush towards improper goals; in the same way, by fettering irrational passions he gave rise to the belief that he had fettered the violent bull. He banished cowardice also from the world, in the shape of the hind of Ceryneia. There was another "labor" too, not properly so called, in which he cleared out the mass of dung — in other words, the foulness that disfigures humanity. The birds he scattered are the windy hopes that feed our lives; the many-headed hydra that he burned, as it were, with the fires of exhortation, is pleasure, which begins to grow again as soon as it is cut out. (en)
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