Second Apology 11

But we would not be put to death, and unjust men and demons would not be stronger than we, if death were not in any case owed by every man who is born; and so we give thanks as we pay the debt. And yet we think it good and timely now to tell Crescens and those who are as senseless as he that story of Xenophon's. Xenophon said that Heracles, coming to a place where three roads met, found Virtue and Vice appearing in the forms of women. And Vice, in luxurious clothing and with a face made seductive and blooming by such arts, and at once enchanting to the eyes, said to Heracles that if he would follow her, she would make him always live in pleasure and adorned with the most splendid adornment, like her own. And Virtue, who was squalid in face and dress, said: “But if you obey me, you will adorn yourself not with the adornment or beauty that flows away and perishes, but with eternal and beautiful adornments.” And we are persuaded that anyone at all who flees the things that seem good, and pursues those thought hard and unreasonable, receives happiness. For Vice, putting on as a screen for her own deeds the qualities that belong to Virtue and are truly good, by imitating incorruptible things (for she has and can make nothing incorruptible), enslaves the groveling among men, casting her own evils over Virtue. But those who have understood what truly belongs to the good are also incorruptible by virtue. This every sensible person must suppose of the Christians, and of those from the contest, and of men who did such things as the poets said of the so-called gods, drawing the inference from our despising even the death that others flee.