De Tranquillitate Animi

Plato,[*](Republic, 604 c; quoted in Moralia, 112 e-f.) for instance, compared life to a game of dice in which we must try, not only to throw what suits us best, but also, when we have thrown, to make good use of whatever turns up. But with circumstances, though it is not in our power to throw what we please, yet it is our task, if we are wise, to accept in a suitable manner whatever accrues from Fortune and to assign to each event a place in which both what suits us shall help us most and what is unwanted shall do least harm. For those who are without skill and sense as to how they should live, like sick people whose bodies can endure neither heat nor cold, are elated by good fortune and depressed by adversity; and they are greatly disturbed by both, or rather by themselves in both and as much in what is called good as in the bad. Theodorus,[*](Cf.Moralia, 378 b, 5 a; Polybius, xxxviii. 2. 8-9; see also von Scala, Rheinisches Museum, xlv. 474 f.) called the Atheist, used to say that he offered his discourses with his right hand, but his audience received them with their left; so uninstructed persons, when Fortune presents herself adroitly on their right, often gauchely substitute their left hands in receiving her and cut a sorry figure. But men of sense, just as bees extract honey from thyme, the most pungent and the driest

of plants,[*](Cf.Moralia, 32 e, 41 f; Porphyry, De Abstinentia, iv. 20 (p. 264 ed. Nauck).) often in like manner draw from the most unfavourable circumstances something which suits them and is useful.