5
Men will deny the envy; and when it is alleged, will feign a thousand excuses, pretending they were angry, or that they feared or hated the person, cloaking envy with the name of any passion they can think of, and concealing it as the most loathsome sickness of the soul.
6
Moreover, these disturbances of the mind, like plants, must be nourished and augmented by the same roots from which they spring; therefore hatred increases as the persons hated grow worse, while envy swells bigger as the envied rise higher in the true braveries of virtue. Upon this consideration Themistocles, whilst he was yet young, said that he had done nothing gallant, for he was not yet envied. And we know that, as the cantharis is most busy with ripe fruits and roses in their beauty, so envy is most employed about the eminently good and those who are glorious in their places and esteem.
6
Again, extreme badness makes hatred more vehement and bitter. The Athenians therefore had so utter an abhorrence of those who accused Socrates, that they would neither lend them fire, nor answer them any question, nor wash with them in the same water, but commanded the servants to pour it out as polluted; till these sycophants, no longer able to bear up under the pressure of this hatred, put an end to their own lives.
6
Yet envy often gives place to the splendor of a matchless prosperity. For it is not likely that any envied Alexander or Cyrus, when they arrived at the height of their conquests and became lords of all. But as the sun, where he passes highest and sends down his beams most directly, has none or very little shadow, so they who are exalted to the meridian of fortune, shining aloof over the head of envy, have scarce any thing of their brightness eclipsed, while envy retires, being driven away by the brightness overspreading it.
