[456] Compare Juvenal, iii. 73, 74: "Sermo Promptus et Isæo torrentior."
[461] "Olynth." ii. p. 8 C; "Pro Corona," 341 C.
[462] Homer, "Iliad," ix. 108, 109. They are the words of Nestor to Agamemnon.
[466] See our author, "Apophthegmata," p. 179 C.
[467] Compare Horace, "Satires," i. 1. 7, 8: "Quid enim, concurritur: horæ Momento cita mors venit aut victoria læta."
[468] And so being dainty. See Athenæus, ii. ch. 76.
[469] We see from this and other places that the mountebanks and quacks of the Middle Ages and later times existed also among the ancients. Human nature in its great leading features is ever the same. "Omne ignotum pro magnifico est."
[471] Homer, "Odyssey," i. 157; iv. 70; xvii. 592.
[472] Ptolemy V., Epiphanes. The circumstances are related by Polybius, xv. 29; xvii. 35.
[474] Thucydides, i. 70: [Greek: kai hama, eiper tines kai alloi, nomizomen axioi einai tois pelas psogon epenenkein].
[475] See our Author, "Apophthegmata," p. 190 E.
[476] A line of Euripides, quoted again in "How a Man may be benefited by his Enemies," § iv.
[483] Euripides, "Hercules Furens," 1250.
[484] "Iliad," v. 800. Athene is the speaker.
[485] A play by Sophocles, now only in fragments, relating the life of Achilles in the island of Scyros, the scene of his amour with Deidamia, the daughter of Lycomedes, by whom he became the father of Pyrrhus.
[486] Thucydides, ii. 64. Quoted again in "On Shyness," § xviii.
[488] [Greek: potous] comes in rather curiously here. Can any other word lurk under it?
[493] In Dindorf's "Poetæ Scenici Græci," Fragment 152.
[494] As it is not quite clear why Achilles should have been angry about his supper, [Greek: dia to deipnon], apropos of the context, Wyttenbach ingeniously suggests, as this lost play of Sophocles was called [Greek: Syn deipnon], that Plutarch may have written [Greek: en tô Deipnô].
[495] Compare "How One may be aware of one's Progress in Virtue," § xi.
[496] "Ductum e proverbiali dictione [Greek: balonta ekpheugein], emisso telo aufugere."--_Wyttenbach._
HOW A MAN MAY BE BENEFITED BY HIS ENEMIES.
§ I. I am well aware, Cornelius Pulcher, that you prefer the mildest manners in public life, by which you can be at once most useful to the community, and most agreeable in private life to those who have any dealings with you. But since it is difficult to find any region without wild beasts, though it is related of Crete;[497] and hitherto there has been no state that has not suffered from envy, rivalry, and strife, the most fruitful seeds of hostility; (for, even if nothing else does, our friendships involve us in enmities, as Chilo[498] the wise man perceived, who asked the man who told him he had no enemy, whether he had a friend either), it seems to me that a public man ought not only to examine the whole question of enemies in its various ramifications, but also to listen to the serious remark of Xenophon,[499] that a sensible man will receive profit even from his enemies. The ideas therefore that lately occurred to me to deliver, I have now put together nearly in the identical words and send them to you, with the exception of some matter also in "Political Precepts,"[500] a treatise which I have often noticed in your hands.