Fortune,Metrocles, who in winter slept among the sheep and in summer in the gateways of sacred precincts, yet challenged to vie with him in happiness the king of the Persians who winters in Babylon and summers in Media.3 Do you bring on slavery and chains and the auction block? Diogenes4 despises you, for when he was being sold by pirates, he cried out with the voice of an auctioneer, “Who wants to buy a master?” Do you mix a cup of poison? Did you not present this to Socrates5 also? And cheerfully and calmly, without trembling or changing either colour or posture, he drained it with great cheerfulness ; and as he died the living esteemed him happy,6 believing that “not even in Hades would he be without some god-given portion.” 7 And as for your fire, Decius8 the Roman general anticipated it, when he built a [p. 371] funeral pyre between the camps and, to fulfil a vow, sacrificed himself to Saturn on behalf of Rome's supremacy. And among the Indians, loving and chaste wives strive and contend with one another for the fire, and the wife who wins the honour of being consumed together with her dead husband is hymned as happy by the others.9 And of the wise men in that part of the world, not one is considered enviable or happy, if, while he yet lives and is sane and healthy, he does not separate by fire his soul from his body and emerge pure from the flesh, with the mortal part washed away. Or will you reduce a man from splendid wealth and house and table and lavish living to a threadbare cloak and wallet and begging of his daily bread? These things were the beginning of happiness for Diogenes, of freedom and repute for Crates. But will you nail him to a cross or impale him on a stake? And what does Theodorus10 care whether he rots above ground or beneath? Among the Scythians11 such is the manner of happy burial; and among the Hyrcanians12 dogs, among the Bactrians birds, devour, in accordance with the laws, the bodies of men, when these have met a happy end.
Do you threaten poverty? Metrocles laughs at you,2
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Cities, as we know, when they give public notice
of intent to let contracts for the building of temples
or colossal statues, listen to the proposals of artists
competing for the commission and bringing in their
estimates and models,1 and then choose the man who
will do the same work with the least expense and
better than the others and more quickly. Come,
then, let us suppose that we also give public proclamation of intent to contract for making a life
wretched, and that Fortune and Vice come to get
the commission in a rival spirit. Fortune is provided
with all manner of instruments and costly apparatus
to render a life miserable and wretched ; she brings in
her train frightful robberies and wars, the foul bloodthirstiness
[p. 369]
of tyrants, and storms at sea and thunder
from the sky ; she compounds hemlock, she carries
swords, she levies informers, she kindles fevers, she
claps on fetters, and builds prison-enclosures (and yet
the greater part of these belong to Vice rather than
to Fortune, but let us suppose them all Fortune's).
And let Vice stand by quite unarmed, needing no
external aid against the man, and let her ask Fortune
how she intends to make man wretched and dejected:
1 Cf., for example, Richter, Greek Sculptors, p. 230: ‘A model of the pediment figures must have preceded the beginning of their execution.’
2 H. Richards has seen that this is probably a verse from comedy.
3 Cf. Moralia, 604 c; Xenophon, Cyropaedia, viii. 6. 22.
4 Cf. Diogenes Laertius, vi. 29. 74; Epictetus, iv. 1. 116.
5 Cf. Plato, Phaedo, 117 b-c.
6 Cf. Moralia, 607 f.
7 Cf. Plato, Phaedo, 58 e; Xenophon, Apology, 32.
8 Cf. Moralia, 310 a-b.
9 This reference to Suttee is of great interest. It is probably derived ultimately from Megasthenes' account of the Maurya Empire of the 3rd centure b.c. See, for example, Rawlinson, India and the Western World (Cambridge University Press, 1916), p. 59.
10 The Cyrenaic, called ‘The Atheist,’, philosopher of the late 4th century b.c.; cf. Moralia, 606 b; Teles ed. Hense, p. 31; Cicero, Tusc. Disp., i. 43. 102; Valerius Maximus, vi. 2, Ext. 3; Seneca, De Tranquillitate, xiv. 3; Wien. Stud., ix. 204.
11 Cf. Herodotus, iv. 71-72.
12 Cf. Porphyry, De Abstinentia, iv. 21; Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, iii. 227; Cicero, Tusc. Disp., i. 45. 108.
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. W. C. Helmbold. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1939. 6.
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