XVIII. (82) And the same hymn is sung by both the choruses, having a most admirable burden of the song which is beautiful to be sung. And it is as follows: “Let us sing unto the Lord, for he has been glorified gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the Sea.”{12}{#ex 15:1.} (83) For no one, if he searches ever so eagerly, can ever discover a more excellent victory than that by which the most mighty army, four-footed, restive, and proud as it was, of the passions and vices was overthrown. For the vices are four in genus, and the passions likewise are equal in number. Moreover, the mind, which is the character of them all, the one which hates virtue and loves the passions, has fallen and perished–the mind, which delighted in pleasures and appetites, and deeds of injustice and wickedness, and likewise in acts of rapine and of covetousness. (84) Very beautifully, therefore, does the lawgiver in his recommendations, teach us not to elect as a chief, a man who is a breeder of horses, thinking that such a one is altogether unsuited to exercise authority, inasmuch as he is in a frenzy about pleasures and appetites, and intolerable loves, and rages about like an unbridled and unmanageable horse. For he speaks thus, “Thou shalt not be able to set over thyself a man that is a stranger, because he is not thy brother; because he will not multiply for himself his horses, and will not turn his people towards Egypt.”{13}{#de 17:15.} (85) Therefore, according to the most holy Moses, no man that was a breeder of horses was ever born fit for dominion; and yet some one perhaps may say that power in cavalry is a great strength to the king, not inferior either to infantry or to a naval force, but in many places far more advantageous than either, and especially in those cases in which one has need of swiftness of motion without delay, but prompt and energetic, when the times do not admit of delay, but are at the very crisis of action, so that those who arrive too late are very naturally not considered to have been sluggish so much as to have been wholly useless, the opportunity for action having passed by like a cloud.
XIX. (86) And we would say to these people: My good men, the lawgiver is removing no protection whatever from the ruler, nor is he in any respect mutilating the army of his power which he has collected, by cutting off the force of cavalry which is the most efficient part of his army; but he is endeavouring to the best of his power to increase and strengthen it, in order that his allies, contributing to its strength and number, may most easily destroy their enemies. (87) For who else is equally skilful in marshalling and arraying armies, and in distributing them in squadrons, and in appointing captains of regiments and leaders of squadrons, and other commanders of large and small bodies, and in displaying a knowledge of all the other suggestions of tactics and strategy, and in explaining the principles of the military art to those who will avail themselves of them skilfully, through the great superabundance of his knowledge of such matters? (88) But the question is not now about his force of cavalry, which it is necessary to collect around the rulers for the destruction of their enemies and the protection of their friends; but concerning the irrational, and immoderate, and unmanageable impetuosity of the soul, which it is desirable to check, lest it should turn all its people towards Egypt, the country of the body, and labour with all its might to render it devoted to pleasures and to the passions, rather than to the service of virtue and of God; since it follows inevitably that he who has acquired a body of cavalry for himself, must, as he said himself, proceed on the road which leads to Egypt. (89) For when the wave rises high and dashes over each side of the soul (looking upon it as a ship), that is to say, over the mind and the outward sense, being lifted up by evident passions and iniquities which blow fiercely upon it, so that the soul leans on one side and is nearly overbalanced; then, as is natural, the mind becoming water-logged, goes down, and the deep in which it is sunk and overwhelmed is the body, which is compared to Egypt.
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