We would not even be put to death, nor would the unjust men and the demons be more powerful than we, were it not that death is in every way owed to every man born; whence also, in paying this debt, we give thanks. And indeed we consider it good and timely now to repeat that saying of Xenophon, against Crescens and those who rave foolishly like him. Xenophon said that Heracles, coming to a certain crossroads, found Virtue and Vice, appearing in the forms of women. And Vice, in soft raiment, with a face made up for love and blooming with such adornments, and at once alluring to the eyes, said to Heracles that, if he would follow her, she would make him live always in pleasure and adorned with the most brilliant adornment, like the adornment about herself. And Virtue, being squalid in face and in dress, said, "But if you obey me, you will adorn yourself not with adornment or beauty that flows away and perishes, but with eternal and beautiful adornments." And we are persuaded that everyone whatever, fleeing the things that seem good and pursuing those reckoned harsh and irrational, awaits happiness. For Vice, throwing around the things that belong to Virtue and are truly good, as a cloak over its own actions, through the imitation of incorruptible things (for it has nothing incorruptible, nor can it produce any), enslaves the groveling among men, casting the base things that belong to it around Virtue. But those who have understood the things that are truly good are also incorruptible in virtue; which everyone of sense ought to suppose concerning both Christians and the athletes and the men who did such things as the poets said about the gods reckoned to be such, from the fact that we despise even the death that is to be fled, drawing this conclusion.