8
At this point there occurs to me the remark of a great and prudent general, Themistocles, Cf. 270 b, supra, and the note. which was made to certain of the generals who came into favour at Athens after him and felt that they deserved to be rated above him. He said that the Day-After contended with the Feast-Day, saying that the Feast-Day was full of wearying tasks and labours, but on the Day-After men enjoyed in quiet all things that had been made ready. Then the Feast-Day said, What you say is true; but if I had not been, where would you be? And so, said Themistocles, if I had not been at the time of the Persian Wars, what benefit would now come from you? And this, methinks, is what Fortune says to the Virtue of Romulus: Brilliant and mighty are your deeds, and in very truth you have proved yourself to be divine in blood and birth. But do you observe how far you fall behind me? For if, at the time of his birth, I had not accompanied him in a helpful and humane guise, but had deserted and abandoned the infants, how could you have come into being and whence had you derived such lustre? If on that occasion there had not come to them a female beast swollen with the abundance and the burden of her milk, and in need of some creature to be fed rather than of something to yield her sustenance, but if instead there had come some utterly savage and ravening creature, would not even now these fair palaces and temples, theatres, promenades, fora, and public buildings be herdsmen’s huts and folds of shepherds who paid homage to some man of Alba or Etruria or Latium as their lord? The beginning, as every one knows, is of supreme importance in everything, Cf. the Pythagorean ἀρχὴ μέν τοι ἥμισυ παντός (Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras, 162). and particularly in the founding and building of a city; and this Fortune provided, since she had preserved and protected the founder. For Virtue made Romulus great, but Fortune watched over him until be became great.
