Book 3
62
And in Antiphanes, in his Soldier or in his Tycho, a man is introduced delivering rules in this way, saying— Whoever is a mortal man, and thinks This life has any sure possession, Is woefully deceived. For either taxes Take off his property; or he goes to law And loses all he seeks, and all he has: Or else he's made a magistrate, and bears The losses they are subject to; or else The people bid him a choragus be, And furnish golden garments for a chorus; And wear but rags himself. Or as a captain Of some tall ship, he hangs himself; or else Takes the command, and then is taken prisoner: Or else, both waking and in soundest sleep, He's helpless, pillaged by his own domestics. Nothing is sure, save what a man can eat, And treats himself to day by day. Nor then, Is even this too sure. For guests drop in To eat what you have order'd for yourself. So not until you've got it 'twixt your teeth Ought you to think that e'en your dinner's safe. And he says the same in his Hydria.
63
Now if any one, my friends, were to consider this, he would naturally and reasonably praise the honest Chrysippus, who examined accurately into the nature of Epicurus's philosophy, and said, That the Gastrology of Archestratus was the metropolis of his philosophy; which all the epicures of philosophers call the Theogony, as it were, that beautiful epic poem; to whom Theognetus, in his Phasma or in his Miser, says— My man, you will destroy me in this way; For you are ill and surfeited with all The divers arguments of all the Stoics. "Gold is no part of man, mere passing rime, Wisdom's his real wealth, solid like ice; No one who has it ever loses it." Oh! wretched that I am; what cruel fate Has lodged me here with this philosopher? Wretch, you have learnt a most perverted learning; Your books have turn'd your whole life upside down; Buried in deep philosophy you talk Of earth and heaven, both of which care little For you and all your arguments.
