The Scythian or Consul (28)

LYCINUS

Well then, my dear Hermotimus, no little deliberation is needed when we choose roads and guides, and we shall not act according to the saying and go off wherever our feet take us; in that way we shall be going off on the road to Babylon or Bactra instead of the road to Corinth without realising it. It is by no means sound to trust to fortune and hope we shall perhaps take the best road, if we start out on

one or the other without enquiry. It is possible for even that to happen, and perhaps at some period of time’s long history it has already happened; but in a matter of such importance I think we ought not to run such a reckless risk or confine hope entirely within narrow bounds, ready as the proverb says to sail the Aegean or Ionian seas on a mat; then we should have no right to accuse fortune, if with her arrows and spears she did not altogether hit the one thing that is true among the many that are not. Even Homer’s archer did not succeed in that—when he should have shot the dove he cut the string; Teucer I think it was. [*] No, there was much more reason to expect one of the many others to be wounded and fall foul of the arrow than that particular one out of them all. The risk is not slight, if in ignorance we rush into one of the by-ways instead of the straight route in the hope that fortune will make a better choice on our behalf—I think you see that. For still to turn round and come back again in safety is no easy matter once a man casts off his mooring lines and surrenders himself to the wind; he must be tossed about on the sea, usually sick and frightened and with a bad head from the swell, whereas he ought in the first place, before he sailed out, to have climbed up to some look-out and seen whether the wind was fair and favourable for those who wanted to sail over to Corinth, and indeed he ought to have selected the very best navigator and a sound ship able to withstand such a heavy sea.