BOOK IV. X. 29-34
snore? What is mine is safe. What is not mine shall be the concern of whoever gets it, according to the terms upon which it may be given by Him who has authority over it. 30Who am I to wish that what is not mine should be either thus or so? For it has not been given me to make a choice among these things, has it? For no one has made me an administrator of them, has he? I am satisfied with the things over which I have authority. These I ought to treat so that they may become as beautiful as possible, but everything else as their master may desire."
Does any man who has all this before his eyes keep vigils, and does he "toss hither and thither"?[1] What does he wish, or what does he yearn for? For Patroclus, or Antilochus, or Protesilaus?[2] Why, when did he regard any of his friends as immortal? Yes, and when did he not have before his eyes the fact that on the morrow or the day after either he or his friend must die?[3] "Yes," he says, "but I had thought he was going to survive me, and bring up my son." No doubt, but then you were a fool, and were thinking of things that were uncertainties. Why, then, do you not blame yourself, instead of sitting and crying like little girls? "Nay, but he used to set my food before me." Yes, fool, for then he was alive; and now he cannot. But Automedon[4] will set your food before you, and if Automedon too die, you will find somebody else.
- ↑ Homer, Iliad, XXIV. 5, referring to Achilles on his bed when mourning for Patroclus.
- ↑ Patroclus and Antilochus were well-known friends of Achilles, but "Menelaus" (the reading of S) must be wrong, partly because he was not in any way a special friend, and particularly because he was not killed, as the context requires. Some other friend of the hero, who was killed, must be supplied, and that can hardly be anyone but Protesilaus, who was one of his playmates under the tutelage of Cheiron. Philostratus, Her. 176 K. Achilles leaped on shore immediately after Protesilaus and avenged his death. See Escher in the Real-Encyclopädie², I. 229, 9 ff.
- ↑ A kind of proverbial expression. Compare Marcus Aurelius, 4. 47.
- ↑ Comrade and charioteer of both Patroclus and Achilles.
