An vitiositas ad infelicitatem sufficia

Again we have a fragment, mutilated at the beginning and the end.[*](There may, in addition, be a lacuna between chapters 1 and 2.) The attribution to Plutarch has been questioned by Dübner, Hense,[*](Teletea, p. lxxxix., note.) Naber, and Hartman,[*](De Plutarcho, pp. 249-253.) but on insufficient grounds, which have, in the main, been explained away by Siefert,[*](Commentationes Ienenses, 1896, pp. 110-119.) who has also analysed the structure of the work and the Plutarchean parallels. Wilamowitz,[*](Hermes, xl. 161-165.) on the other hand, believed this and the following fragment to be scraps of the same dialogue: I follow Pohlenz in rejecting this view.[*](Similarly Usener, Fleckeisens Jahrb., cxxxix. 381, believed this treatise to be a fragment of the work mentioned in the Lamprias catalogue as No. 84: Ἀμμώνιος ἢ περὶ τοῦ μὴ ἡδέως τῇ κακίᾳ συνεῖναι.)

The text is not good, and the work is not mentioned in the Lamprias catalogue.

...[*](This passage is tantalizing, not only because so much is lost of the text, and because the text is so corrupt, but chiefly because since the discovery of the Claremont fragments of Euripides’ Phaëthon we may perceive that this play, of whose ingenious plot we now know a good deal, colours the whole of the opening passage. In the play Phaëthon, declining to accept marriage with the goddess to whom his mother Clymene wished to marry him, speaks the first verse quoted; and there are probably further quotations from the play in the second sentence (πολλῆς διὰ τέφρας ἀλλὰ πυρκαϊᾶς τινος). It is quite possible that Phaëthon himself swears that he will go through heaps of cinders rather than marry the goddess; and in the play there is in fact a royal conflagration when the Sun’s treasure-house burns (see Nauck, p. 601). But it cannot be too strongly insisted that the text is very corrupt and that the restorations here adopted can claim only an approximation to the truth.) He will not submit to (such a marriage)[*](Conjecturally supplied.)

His body bartered for the dower’s sake,

1. That he might not follow him to wind-swept Troy,
2. But stay at home and take his pleasure,[*](Adapted from Homer, Il., xxiii. 297-298; Echepolus is the Sicyonian referred to. cf. Moralia, 32 f.)

1. His wife, rending both cheeks, was left behind
2. In Phylace, and his half-finished home,[*](Homer, Il., ii. 700-701.)

Vice makes all men completely miserable, since as a creator of unhappiness it is clothed with absolute power, for it has no need of either instruments or ministers. But whereas despots, when they desire to make miserable those whom they punish, maintain executioners and torturers, or devise branding-irons

Cities, as we know, when they give public notice of intent to let contracts for the building of temples or colossal statues, listen to the proposals of artists competing for the commission and bringing in their estimates and models,[*](Cf., for example, Richter, Greek Sculptors, p. 230: A model of the pediment figures must have preceded the beginning of their execution.) and then choose the man who will do the same work with the least expense and better than the others and more quickly. Come, then, let us suppose that we also give public proclamation of intent to contract for making a life wretched, and that Fortune and Vice come to get the commission in a rival spirit. Fortune is provided with all manner of instruments and costly apparatus to render a life miserable and wretched; she brings in her train frightful robberies and wars, the foul bloodthirstiness

1. Fortune,
2. Do you threaten poverty? Metrocles laughs at you,[*](H. Richards has seen that this is probably a verse from comedy.)

Metrocles, who in winter slept among the sheep and in summer in the gateways of sacred precincts, yet challenged to vie with him in happiness the king of the Persians who winters in Babylon and summers in Media.[*](cf. Moralia, 604 c; Xenophon, Cyropaedia, viii. 6. 22.) Do you bring on slavery and chains and the auction block? Diogenes[*](Cf. Diogenes Laertius, vi. 29. 74; Epictetus, iv. 1. 116.) despises you, for when he was being sold by pirates, he cried out with the voice of an auctioneer, Who wants to buy a master? Do you mix a cup of poison? Did you not present this to Socrates[*](Cf. Plato, Phaedo, 117 b-c.) also? And cheerfully and calmly, without trembling or changing either colour or posture, he drained it with great cheerfulness; and as he died the living esteemed him happy,[*](cf. Moralia, 607 f.) believing that not even in Hades would he be without some god-given portion. [*](Cf. Plato, Phaedo, 58 e; Xenophon, Apology, 32.) And as for your fire, Decius[*](cf. Moralia, 310 a-b.) the Roman general anticipated it, when he built a

funeral pyre between the camps and, to fulfil a vow, sacrificed himself to Saturn on behalf of Rome’s supremacy. And among the Indians, loving and chaste wives strive and contend with one another for the fire, and the wife who wins the honour of being consumed together with her dead husband is hymned as happy by the others.[*](This reference to Suttee is of great interest. It is probably derived ultimately from Megasthenes’ account of the Maurya Empire of the 3rd centure b.c. See, for example, Rawlinson, India and the Western World (Cambridge University Press, 1916), p. 59.) And of the wise men in that part of the world, not one is considered enviable or happy, if, while he yet lives and is sane and healthy, he does not separate by fire his soul from his body and emerge pure from the flesh, with the mortal part washed away. Or will you reduce a man from splendid wealth and house and table and lavish living to a threadbare cloak and wallet and begging of his daily bread? These things were the beginning of happiness for Diogenes, of freedom and repute for Crates. But will you nail him to a cross or impale him on a stake? And what does Theodorus[*](The Cyrenaic, called The Atheist,, philosopher of the late 4th century b.c.; cf. Moralia, 606 b; Teles ed. Hense, p. 31; Cicero, Tusc. Disp., i. 43. 102; Valerius Maximus, vi. 2, Ext. 3; Seneca, De Tranquillitate, xiv. 3; Wien. Stud., ix. 204.) care whether he rots above ground or beneath? Among the Scythians[*](Cf. Herodotus, iv. 71-72.) such is the manner of happy burial; and among the Hyrcanians[*](Cf. Porphyry, De Abstinentia, iv. 21; Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, iii. 227; Cicero, Tusc. Disp., i. 45. 108.) dogs, among the Bactrians birds, devour, in accordance with the laws, the bodies of men, when these have met a happy end.

Whom, then, do these things make wretched? The unmanly and irrational, the unpracticed and untrained, those who retain from childhood their notions unchanged. Therefore Fortune is not a producer of

Is, then, Vice such a thing that it needs Fortune’s help to produce unhappiness? How can that be? Vice does not raise up a rough and stormy sea, she does not gird the skirts of lonely mountains with ambushes of robbers along the way, she does not make clouds of hail to burst on fruitful plains, she does not bring in a Meletus or an Anytus[*](Cf. 475 e, supra.) or a Callixenus[*](Cf. Xenophon, Hellenica, i. 7. 8. ff.) as accusers, she does not take away wealth, she does not debar from the praetorship, in order to make men unhappy. Yet she dismays men