Whether vice be sufficient to cause unhappiness (1)

...[*] He will not submit to (such a marriage)[*]

His body bartered for the dower’s sake,

as Euripides[*] says; but he has only a slight and precarious reason for being envied. For this man (it were better)[*] to make his journey, not through heaps of hot cinders, but through a royal conflagration, as it were, and surrounded by flames, panting and full of terror and drenched with sweat, and so to perish, though (his mother)[*] had offered to him such a wealth as Tantalus had, which he was too busy to enjoy. For while that Sicyonian horsebreeder was a wise man, who gave to the king of the Achaeans, Agamemnon, a swift mare as a gift,

That he might not follow him to wind-swept Troy,

But stay at home and take his pleasure,[*]

surrendering himself to the enjoyment of deep riches and to unmolested ease; yet modern courtiers who are looked upon as men of affairs, though no one summons them, of their own accord push their way headlong into courts and official escorts and toilsome bivouacs that they may get a horse or a brooch or some such piece of good fortune.

His wife, rending both cheeks, was left behind

In Phylace, and his half-finished home,[*]

while he himself is swept about and wanders afar, worn out by one hope after another and constantly insulted; and even if he obtains any of his desires, yet, whirled about and made giddy by Fortune’s ropedance, he seeks to make his descent and considers happy those who live in obscurity and safety, whereas they so regard him as they look up at him soaring above their heads.