De mercede

Lucian of Samosata

Lucian, Vol. 3. Harmon, A. M., editor. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921.

You must be content, how- “ever, for it would not even be possible for you to get away, now that you are in the paddock. So you take the bit with your eyes shut, and in the beginning you answer his touch readily, as he does not pull hard or spur sharply until you have imperceptibly grown quite used to him.

People on the outside envy you after that, seeing that you live within the pale and enter without let and have become a notable figure in the inner circle.

v.3.p.449

You yourself do not yet see why you seem to them to be fortunate. Nevertheless, you are joyous and delude yourself, and are always thinking that the future will turn out better. But the reverse of what you expected comes about: as the proverb has it, the thing goes Mandrobulus-wise,[*]("This Mandrobulus once found a treasure in Samos and dedicated to Hera a golden sheep, and in the second year one of silver, and in the third, one of bronze.” Scholia, ) diminishing every day, almost, and dropping back.

Slowly and gradually, therefore, as if you could then distinguish things for the first time in the indistinct light, you begin to realize that those golden hopes were nothing but gilded bubbles, while your labours are burdensome and genuine, inexorable and continuous. “What are they?” perhaps you will ask me: “J. do not see what there is in such posts that is laborious, nor can I imagine what those wearisome and insupportable things are that you spoke of.”[*](In chapter 13. ) Listen, then, my worthy friend, and do not simply try to find out whether there is any weariness im the thing, but give its baseness and humility and general slavishness more than incidental consideration in the hearing.