That Megalopolis, peopled with such zeal on the part of all the
Arcadians and with the best wishes from all Greece, has lost all its
ancient prestige and felicity and is in our day mostly ruins, I nothing
marvel at, knowing that the deity ever likes to introduce changes, and
that fortune in like manner changes things strong and weak, present
and past, reducing with a high hand everything in subjection to her.
Witness Mycenæ, which in the days of the war against Ilium was the
leading power in Greece, and Nineveh the seat of the Assyrian empire,
and Thebes in Bœotia, which was once reckoned worthy to be at the
head of Greece: the two former are in ruins and without inhabitants,
while the name of Thebes has come down to a citadel only and a few
inhabitants. And of the cities which were excessively wealthy of old,
as Thebes in Egypt, and Orchomenus belonging to the Minyæ, and Delos
the emporium of all Greece, the two former are hardly as wealthy as a
man moderately well off, while Delos is actually without a population
at all, if you do not reckon the Athenians who come to guard the
temple. And of Babylon nothing remains but the temple of Bel and the
walls, though it was the greatest city once that the sun shone upon, as
nothing but its walls remain to Tiryns in Argolis. All these the deity
has reduced to nothing. Whereas Alexandria in Egypt and Seleucia on
the Orontes, that were built only yesterday, have attained to such a
size and felicity, that fortune seems to lavish her favours upon them.
Fortune also exhibits her power more mightily and wonderfully than in
the good or bad fortune of cities in the following cases. No long sail
from Lemnos is the island Chryse, in which they say Philoctetes met
with his bite from the watersnake. This island was entirely submerged
by the waves, so that it went to the bottom of the sea. And another
island called Hiera, which did not then exist, has been formed by the
action of the sea. So fleeting and unstable are human affairs!