Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
...he endures, holding his body sold for a dowry, as Euripides says — a thing shown to be brief and insecure. But for him it is not through much ash but through some royal conflagration that he travels, scorched all around, full of gasping breath and fear and sweat from crossing the sea, since Fortune has added to him a kind of Tantalus-wealth which, for want of leisure, he is unable to enjoy. For that famous horse-breeder of Sicyon, being sensible, gave to the king of the Achaeans
a swift mare as a gift, so that he might not have to follow him to windy Ilium, but might remain at home and take his ease, reclining into deep abundance and untroubled leisure. But those who nowadays seem to be free of care and full of enterprise, though no one summons them, thrust themselves headlong into royal courts and escort-duties and toilsome all-night vigils at other men's doors, in hopes of chancing upon some horse, or brooch, or other such stroke of fortune.
Meanwhile his own wife was left behind at Phylace with her cheeks torn in mourning, and his house half-finished; he himself is dragged about and wanders, worn down by certain hopes and treated with contempt; and even if he does attain something he longs for, whirled about and made dizzy by fortune's seesaw, he looks for a way down and counts blessed those without repute who live securely — while they, looking up, see him carried high above them. In every way,
vice disposes all men to misery, being itself a self-sufficient craftsman of wretchedness; for it has need of neither instruments nor servants. Other tyrants, eager to make wretched those they punish, keep executioners and torturers in their pay, or devise branding-irons and clamps — for a soul without reason. But vice, apart from all such apparatus, once it has entered into partnership with the soul, crushes it and casts it down, filling
the person with grief, lamentation, heaviness of spirit, and regret. Here is the proof: many men, when cut, are silent, and when flogged, endure it, and when racked by masters or tyrants let out no sound, because the soul, closing itself off by reason, presses down and restrains the pain as though with a hand. But you could not command silence to anger, nor stillness to grief; you could not persuade a frightened man to stand firm, nor keep one distressed by remorse from crying out, or tearing his hair, or
beating his own thigh. So vice is more violent than fire or iron. Cities, of course, when they put out a contract for the building of temples or colossal statues, listen to the craftsmen competing for the commission and bringing their proposals and models, and then choose the one who can produce the same result at less expense, and better, and more quickly. Come, then, let us too put out to contract the production of
a wretched life and a wretched man, and let Fortune and Vice come forward as rival bidders for the work, contending with one another: the one laden with instruments of every kind and costly equipment for manufacturing a miserable and pitiable life — dragging along bands of robbers, and wars, and the bloody murders of tyrants, and storms from the sea, and thunderbolts from the sky, grinding hemlock, carrying swords, hiring false accusers as mercenaries, kindling fevers, and
clapping on fetters and building prisons round about. And yet most of these belong to Vice rather than to Fortune — but let it all be granted to Fortune anyway. Let Vice, then, standing by naked and needing nothing from outside, put this question to Fortune before the man: how will she make this man wretched and disheartened? 'Fortune, do you threaten him with poverty? Metrocles laughs at you — he who, sleeping in winter among
the sheep, and in summer in the porches of temples, used to challenge to a contest of happiness the King of Persia, who wintered in Babylon and summered in Media. Do you bring on slavery, chains, and being sold? Diogenes despises you — he who, being sold by pirates, proclaimed, 'Who wishes to buy himself a master?' Do you stir up a cup of poison? Did you not offer this same cup to Socrates before, and did he not, serene
and gentle, without a tremor and without any change of color or expression, drink it down quite readily? And as he was dying, the living called him blessed, since not even in Hades would he be without his share of the divine. Indeed, Decius the Roman general forestalled your fire, when, heaping up a pyre in the midst of the armies, he devoted himself as a sacrifice to Cronus in fulfillment of a vow, on behalf of the command.
And among the Indians, wives who love their husbands and are chaste vie and fight with one another over the fire, and the rest sing the winner blessed for being burned together with her dead husband. And none of the sages there is envied or called blessed unless, while still alive, in his right mind, and sound of body, he parts his soul from the flesh by fire and comes forth pure, having washed away the
mortal element. But will you bring a man down from a splendid estate, a house, a table, and luxury, into a rough cloak, a beggar's bag, and begging for his daily bread? These were the very beginnings of happiness for Diogenes, of freedom and glory for Crates. But will you nail him to a cross, or impale him on a stake? What does Theodorus care whether he rots above the earth or beneath it? Among the Scythians such things count as blessed burials; among the Hyrcanians, dogs — among the Bactrians,
birds — eat the dead according to their laws, when they attain a blessed end.' Whom, then, do such things make wretched? The unmanly and unreasoning, the untried and untrained, those who from infancy cling to the opinions they have formed. Fortune, then, is not by herself the accomplisher of misery, unless she has vice working together with her. For just as a thread saws through bone once the bone has been soaked through with ash and vinegar, and
as ivory, once it has been softened and made pliant with beer, can be bent and reshaped, though otherwise it cannot, so Fortune, falling upon what has already been affected and softened by vice, hollows it out and wounds it. And just as the Parthian poison, harmful to none of those who merely touch it and carry it about, if it once comes into contact with a wound, straightaway destroys the one who has been affected and who receives
its effluence: so one who is to be crushed by Fortune must already have his own sore within himself, and some evil of the flesh, so that what befalls him from outside may become cause for lament. Is vice, then, of such a kind that it needs Fortune in order to accomplish misery? Far from it. It does not raise up a rough and stormy sea; it does not gird desolate foothills with the ambushes of highway robbers; it does not burst hail-laden clouds over fruit-bearing plains; it does not urge on Meletus,
nor Anytus, nor hire Callixenus as a false accuser; it does not strip away wealth, nor bar a man from high command, in order to make men wretched. No — it makes men wretched even while they are rich, prospering, inheriting land, and sailing the sea; it has crept in and taken root, wasting them away with desires, burning them up with fits of anger, crushing them with superstitious fears, and tearing them apart through their own eyes.