What or from whence I am, or who my sire
(Replied the chief), can Tydeus’ son enquire?
Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;
Another race the following spring supplies;
They fall successive, and successive rise.
So generations in their course decay;
So flourish these, when those are past away.[146]
How prettily he managed this image of human life appears from what he
hath said in another place:—
For what is man? Calamitous by birth,
They owe their life and nourishment to earth;
Like yearly leaves, that now with beauty crown’d,
Smile on the sun, now wither on the ground.[147]
When Pausanias the king of Sparta was frequently bragging of his
performances, and bidding Simonides the lyric poet in raillery to
give him some wise precept, he, knowing the vain-glory of him that
spoke, admonished him to remember that he was a man. Philip the
king of Macedon, when he had received three despatches of good news
at the same time, of which the first was that his chariots had
won the victory in the Olympic games, the second, that his general
Parmenio had overcome the Dardanians in fight, and the third, that
his wife Olympias had brought him forth an heir,—lifting up his eyes
to heaven, he passionately cried out, Propitious Daemon! let the
affliction be moderate by which thou intendest to be even with me for
this complicated happiness. Theramenes, one of the thirty tyrants of
Athens, when he alone was preserved from the ruins of a house that
fell upon the rest of his friends as they were sitting at supper, and
all came about him to congratulate him on his escape,—broke out in an
emphatical accent, Fortune! for what calamity dost thou reserve me? And
not long after, by the command of his fellow-tyrants, he was tormented
to death.
7. But Homer seems to indicate a particular praise to himself, when he
brings in Achilles speaking thus to Priam, who was come forth to ransom
the body of Hector:—
Rise then; let reason mitigate our care:
To mourn avails not: man is born to bear.
Such is, alas! the Gods’ severe decree:
They, only they, are blest, and only free.
Two urns by Jove’s high throne have ever stood,
The source of evil one, and one of good;
From thence the cup of mortal man he fills,
Blessings to these, to these distributes ills;
To most he mingles both; the wretch decreed
To taste the bad unmix’d is cursed indeed;
Pursued by wrongs, by meagre famine driven,
He wanders, outcast both of earth and heaven.[148]
Hesiod, who was the next to Homer both in respect of time and
reputation, and who professed to be a disciple of the Muses, fancied
that all evils were shut up in a box, and that Pandora opening it
scattered all sorts of mischiefs through both the earth and seas:—
The cover of the box she did remove,
And to fly out the crowding mischief strove;
But slender hope upon the brims did stay,
Ready to vanish into air away;
She with retrieve the haggard in did put,
And on the prisoner close the box did shut;
But plagues innumerable abroad did fly,
Infecting all the earth, the seas, and sky.
Diseases now with silent feet do creep,
Torment us waking, and afflict our sleep.
These midnight evils steal without a noise,
For Jupiter deprived them of their voice.[149]
8. After these the comedian, talking of those who bear afflictions
uneasily, speaks consonantly to this purpose:—
If we in wet complaints could quench our grief,
At any rate we’d purchase our relief;
With proffered gold would bribe off all our fears,
And make our eyes distil in precious tears.
But the Gods mind not mortals here below,
Nor the least thought on our affairs bestow;
But with an unregarding air pass by,
Whether our cheeks be moist, or whether dry.
Unhappiness is always sorrow’s root,
And tears do hang from them like crystal fruit.
And Dictys comforts Danae, who was bitterly taking on, after this
manner:—
Dost think that thy repinings move the grave,
Or from its jaws thy dying son can save?
If thou would’st lessen it, thy grief compare;—
Consider how unhappy others are;
How many bonds of slavery do hold;
How many of their children robbed grow old;
How sudden Fate throws off th’ usurped crown,
And in the dirt doth tread the tyrant down.
Let this with deep impression in thee sink,
And on these revolutions often think.[150]
He bids her consider the condition of those who have suffered equal
or greater afflictions, and by such a parallel to comfort up her own
distempered mind.
9. And here that opinion of Socrates comes in very pertinently, who
thought that if all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap,
whence every one must take an equal portion, most people would be
contented to take their own and depart. After this manner Antimachus
the poet allayed his grief when he lost his wife Lyde, whom he
tenderly loved; for he writ an elegy upon her, which he called by
her own name, and in it he numbered up all the calamities which have
befallen great men; and so by the remembrance of other men’s sorrows he
assuaged his own. By this it may appear, that he who comforts another
who is macerating himself with grief, and demonstrates to him, by
reckoning up their several misfortunes, that he suffers nothing but
what is common to him with other men, takes the surest way to lessen
the opinion he had of his condition, and brings him to believe that it
is not altogether so bad as he took it to be.
10. Aeschylus also doth justly reprimand those who think death to be an
evil, declaring after this manner:—
Some as a thing injurious death do fly;
But of all mischiefs ’tis the remedy.