Essays in Portraiture (21)

POLYSTRATUS Not all of it! The very greatest items in her praise are still unincluded. I mean that in so elevated a station she has not clothed herself in pride over her success, and has not been uplifted above the limit that beseems humanity through confidence in Fortune, but keeps herself upon the common plane, with no tasteless or vulgar aspirations, treats her visitors familiarly and as an equal, and gives her friends greetings and evidences of affection that are all the sweeter to them because, although they come from one who is above them, they make no display of circumstance. Truly, all those who employ great power not in superciliousness but in kindness, are regarded as especially worthy of the blessings that have been bestowed upon them by Fortune, and they alone deserve to escape envy. Nobody will envy the man above him if he sees him behaving with moderation amid his successes and not, like Homer's Ate,[*] treading on the heads of

men and crushing whatever is feebler. That is the way: in which the low-minded are affected because of their vulgarity of soul. When, without their expecting anything of the sort, Fortune suddenly sets them in a winged, aerial car, they do not bide contentedly where they are, and do not look beneath them, but force themselves ever upwards. Therefore, as in the case of Icarus, their wax quickly melts, their wings moult, and they bring ridicule upon themselves by falling head-first into deep waters and breaking seas. But those who pattern after Daedalus in the use of their wings and do not rise too high, knowing that their pinions were made of wax, but stint their flight as mere mortals should and are content to be carried above, but only just above, the waves, so that they keep their wings always wet and avoid exposing them to sheer sunshine— they wing their passage at once safely and discreetly. This is what might be most praised in her. Consequently she gets from all the return that she deserves; for all pray that these wings may abide with her and that blessings may accrue to her in still greater fulness.