after the impossible, hoping in vain to find a perfectly faultless man
among those who partake of the fruit of the broad-bosomed earth: if I find
him, I will send you word.'

(this is the vehement way in which he pursues his attack upon Pittacus
throughout the whole poem):

'But him who does no evil, voluntarily I praise and love;--not even the
gods war against necessity.'

All this has a similar drift, for Simonides was not so ignorant as to say
that he praised those who did no evil voluntarily, as though there were
some who did evil voluntarily. For no wise man, as I believe, will allow
that any human being errs voluntarily, or voluntarily does evil and
dishonourable actions; but they are very well aware that all who do evil
and dishonourable things do them against their will. And Simonides never
says that he praises him who does no evil voluntarily; the word
'voluntarily' applies to himself. For he was under the impression that a
good man might often compel himself to love and praise another, and to be
the friend and approver of another; and that there might be an involuntary
love, such as a man might feel to an unnatural father or mother, or
country, or the like. Now bad men, when their parents or country have any
defects, look on them with malignant joy, and find fault with them and
expose and denounce them to others, under the idea that the rest of mankind
will be less likely to take themselves to task and accuse them of neglect;
and they blame their defects far more than they deserve, in order that the
odium which is necessarily incurred by them may be increased: but the good
man dissembles his feelings, and constrains himself to praise them; and if
they have wronged him and he is angry, he pacifies his anger and is
reconciled, and compels himself to love and praise his own flesh and blood.