a warning letter to his friend.

The great prosperity of his friend and ally, he said, caused him
foreboding instead of joy, for he knew that the gods were envious, and
he desired for those he loved alternate good and ill fortune. He had
never heard of any one who was successful in all his enterprises that
did not meet with calamity in the end. He therefore counselled
Polycrates to do what the gods had not yet done, and bring some
misfortune on himself. His advice was that he should select the treasure
he most valued and could least bear to part with, and throw it away so
that it should never be seen again. By this voluntary sacrifice he might
avert involuntary loss and suffering.

This advice seemed wise to the despot, and he began to consider which of
his possessions he could least bear to lose. He settled at length on his
signet-ring, an emerald set in gold, which he highly valued. This he
determined to throw away where it could never be recovered. So, having
one of his fifty-oared vessels manned, he put to sea, and when he had
gone a long distance from the coast he took the ring from his finger
and, in the presence of all the sailors, tossed it into the waters.

This was not done without deep grief to Polycrates. He valued the ring
more highly than ever, now that it lay on the bottom of the sea,
irretrievably lost to him, as he thought; and he grieved for days
thereafter, feeling that he had endured a real misfortune, which he
hoped the gods might accept as a compensation for his good luck.

But destiny is not so easily to be disarmed. Several days afterwards a
Samian fisherman had the fortune to catch a fish so large and beautiful
that he esteemed it worthy to be offered as a present to the king. He
accordingly went with it to the palace gates and asked to see
Polycrates. The guards, learning his purpose, admitted him. On coming
into the king's presence, the fisherman said that, though he was a poor
man who lived by his labor, he could not let himself offer such a prize
in the public market.

"I said to myself," he continued, "'It is worthy of Polycrates and his
greatness;' and so I brought it here to give it to you."

The compliment and the gift so pleased the tyrant that he not only
thanked the fisherman warmly, but invited him to sup with him on the
fish.

But a wonder happened in the king's kitchen. On the cook's cutting open
the fish to prepare it for the table, to his surprise he found within it
_the