piteous and lamentable.

Sec. V. Does then Vice need Fortune to bring about infelicity? By no means.
She lashes not up the rough and stormy sea, she girds not lonely
mountain passes with robbers lying in wait by the way, she makes not
clouds of hail to burst on the fruitful plains, she suborns not Meletus
or Anytus or Callixenus as accusers, she takes not away wealth, excludes
not people from the praetorship to make them wretched; but she scares the
rich, the well-to-do, and great heirs; by land and sea she insinuates
herself and sticks to people, infusing lust, inflaming with anger,
afflicting them with superstitious fears, tearing them in pieces with
envy.

[304] The beginning of this short Treatise is lost. Nor
is the first paragraph at all clear. We have to guess
somewhat at the meaning.

[305] In a fragment of the "Phaethon." Compare also "On
Education," Sec. 19.

[306] "Iliad," xxiii. 297, 298.

[307] "Iliad," ii. 700, 701.

[308] 'Tis ever so. Compare Horace, "Sat." i. i. 1-14.

[309] Adopting Reiske's reading.

[310] Proverbial for extreme good fortune. Cf. Horace,
"Odes," iii. ix. 4, "Persarum vigui rege beatior."

[311] See Herodotus, iv. 72.

WHETHER THE DISORDERS OF MIND OR
BODY ARE WORSE.

Sec. I. Homer, looking at the mortality of all living creatures, and
comparing them with one another in their lives and habits, gave vent to
his thoughts in the words,

"Of all the things that on the earth do breathe,
Or creep, man is by far the wretchedest;"[312]

assigning to man an unhappy pre-eminence in extreme misfortune. But let
us, assuming that man is, as thus publicly declared, supreme in
infelicity and the most wretched of all living creatures, compare him
with himself, in the estimate of his misery dividing body and soul, not
idly but in a very necessary way, that we may learn whether our life is
more wretched owing to Fortune or through our own fault. For disease is
engendered in the body by nature, but vice and depravity in the soul is
first its own doing, then its settled condition. And it is no slight aid
to tranquillity of mind if what is bad be capable of cure, and lighter
and less violent.

Sec. II. The fox in AEsop[313] disputing with the leopard as to their
respective claims to variety, the latter showed its body and appearance
all bright and spotted, while the tawny skin of the former was dirty and
not pleasant to look