ater also is undrinkable and
brackish, but it feeds fish, and is a sort of vehicle to convey and
transport travellers anywhere. The Satyr, when he saw fire for the first
time, wished to kiss it and embrace it, but Prometheus warned him,

"Goat, thou wilt surely mourn thy loss of beard."[501]

For fire burns whoever touches it, but it also gives light and warmth,
and is an instrument of art to all those who know how to use it.[502]
Consider also in the case of the enemy, if he is in other respects
injurious and intractable, he somehow or other gives us a handle to make
use of him by, and so is serviceable. And many things are unpleasant and
detestable and antagonistic to those to whom they happen, but you must
have noticed that some use even illnesses as a period of rest for the
body, and others by excessive toil have strengthened and trained their
bodily vigour, and some have made exile and the loss of money a passage
to leisure and philosophy, as did Diogenes and Crates. And Zeno, when he
heard of the wreck of the ship which contained all his property, said,
"Thou hast done well, Fortune, to confine me to my threadbare
cloak."[503]

For as those animals that have the strongest and healthiest stomachs eat
and digest serpents and scorpions, and some even feed on stones and
shells, which they convert into nourishment by the strength and heat of
their stomachs, while fastidious people out of health almost vomit if
offered bread and wine, so foolish people spoil even their friendships,
while the wise know how to turn to account even their enmities.

Sec. III. In the first place then it seems to me that what is most
injurious in enmity may become most useful to those that pay attention
to it? To what do I refer? Why, to the way in which your enemy ever wide
awake pries into all your affairs, and analyzes your whole life, trying
to get a handle against you somewhere, able not only to look through a
tree, like Lynceus,[504] or through stones and shells, but through your
friend and domestic and every intimate acquaintance, as far as possible
detecting your doings, and digging and ferreting into your designs. For
our friends are ill and often die without our knowing anything about it
through our delay and carelessness, but we almost pry into even the
dreams of our enemies; and our enemy knows even more than we do
ourselves of our diseases and debts and differences with our wives.[505]
But they pay most attention to our faul