principles: your sight is not so piercing as that of Lynceus; you will not however therefore despise being anointed, if you are sore-eyed: nor because you despair of the muscles of the invincible Glycon,[1] will you be careless of preserving your body from the knotty gout. There is some point to which we may reach, if we can go no further. Does your heart burn with avarice, and a wretched desire of more? Spells there are, and incantations, with which you may mitigate this pain, and rid yourself of a great part of the distemper. Do you swell with the love of praise? There are certain purgations which can restore you, a certain treatise, being perused thrice with purity of mind. The envious, the choleric, the indolent, the slave to wine, to women—none is so savage that he can not be tamed, if he will only lend a patient ear to discipline.
It is virtue, to fly vice; and the highest wisdom, to have lived free from folly. You see with what toil of mind and body you avoid those things which you believe to be the greatest evils, a small fortune and a shameful repulse. An active merchant, you run to the remotest Indies,[2] fleeing poverty through sea, through rocks, through flames. And will you not learn, and hear, and be advised by one who is wiser, that you may no longer regard those things which you foolishly admire and wish for? What little champion of the villages and of the streets would scorn being crowned at the great Olympic[3] games, who had the hopes and happy oppor-
- ↑ The commentators tell us, from Diogenes Laërtius, that Glycon was a philosopher who had made himself famous by his dexterity and skill in athletic exercises. But more probably the poet alluded to a statue, which is still preserved in Rome, and of which MOntfaucon speaks thus: Hercules of Farnese, the finest of all, is a master-piece of art. It is the performance of Glycon the Athenian, who hath immortalized his name by putting it at the bottom of this admirable statue. It is a common language to say of pictures and statues, that is a Titian; this an Apelles. Fran.
- ↑ Before the reduction of Egypt and Arabia, the passage to India was unknown to the Romans. Strabo tells us that while Ælius Gallus governed Egypt, in the year 727, a fleet of twenty-six merchantment set sail from the Red Sea for India. The Romans, attentive to their interests, flattered by an immense profit arising from this trade, and allured by the rich and beautiful merchandize which it brought home, applied themselves earnestly to this commerce, from whence the poet reproaches them with excessive covetousness. San.
- ↑ Horace, in imitation of Pindar, calls the Olympic games "magna," great, because they were the most famous of all that were celebrated in
