let him not sit down in an astonishing admiration of rich men, as if
they were enabled by their wealth to purchase virtue, nor let him
imagine that it is in the power of Fortune to increase or lessen his
own wisdom; but let him conceive that the poet by virtue meant either
glory or power or prosperity or something of like import. For poets
use the same ambiguity also in the word κακότης, _evil_, which
sometimes in them properly signifies a wicked and malicious disposition
of mind, as in that of Hesiod,
Evil is soon acquired; for everywhere
There’s plenty on’t and t’all men’s dwellings near;[56]
and sometimes some evil accident or misfortune, as when Homer says,
Sore evils, when they haunt us in our prime,
Hasten old age on us before our time.[57]
So also in the word εὐδαιμονία, he would be sorely deceived who should
imagine that, wheresoever he meets with it in poets, it means (as it
does in philosophy) a perfect habitual enjoyment of all good things or
the leading a life every way agreeable to Nature, and that they do not
withal by the abuse of such words call rich men happy or blessed, and
power or glory felicity. For, though Homer rightly useth terms of that
nature in this passage,—
Though of such great estates I am possest,
Yet with true inward joy I am not blest;[58]
and Menander in this,—
So great’s th’ estate I am endowed withal.
All say I’m rich, but none me happy call;—
yet Euripides discourseth more confusedly and perplexedly when he
writes after this manner,—