discriminis atque laboris
Inde habuit: tanto major famae sitis est, quam
Virtutis."

["For these the Roman, the Greek, and the Barbarian commander hath
aroused himself; he has incurred thence causes of danger and toil:
so much greater is the thirst for fame than for virtue."
--Juvenal, x. 137.]

CHAPTER XLVII

OF THE UNCERTAINTY OF OUR JUDGMENT

Well says this verse:

["There is everywhere much liberty of speech."--Iliad, xx. 249.]

For example:

["Hannibal conquered, but knew not how to make the best use of his
victorious venture."--Petrarch, Son., 83.]

Such as would improve this argument, and condemn the oversight of our
leaders in not pushing home the victory at Moncontour, or accuse the King
of Spain of not knowing how to make the best use of the advantage he had
against us at St. Quentin, may conclude these oversights to proceed from
a soul already drunk with success, or from a spirit which, being full and
overgorged with this beginning of good fortune, had lost the appetite of
adding to it, already having enough to do to digest what it had taken in:
he has his arms full, and can embrace no more: unworthy of the benefit
fortune has conferred upon him and the advantage she had put into his
hands: for what utility does he reap from it, if, notwithstanding, he
give his enemy respite to rally and make head against him? What hope is
there that he will dare at another time to attack an enemy reunited and
recomposed, and armed anew with anger and revenge, who did not dare to
pursue them when routed and unmanned by fear?

"Dum fortuna calet, dum conficit omnia terror."

["Whilst fortune is fresh, and terror finishes all."
--Lucan, vii. 734.]

But withal, what better opportunity can he expect than that he has lost?
'Tis not here, as in fencing, where the most hits gain the prize; for so
long as the enemy is on foot, the game is new to begin, and that is not
to be called a victory that puts not an end to the war. In the encounter
where Caesar had the worst, near the city of Oricum, he reproached
Pompey's soldiers that he had been lost had their general known how to
overcome; and afterwards clawed him in a very different fashion when it
came to his turn.

But why may not a man also argue, on the contrary, that it is the effect
of a precipitous and insatiate spirit not to know how to bound and
restrain its coveting; that it is