ever admiring
other people's reputations and fortunes, as adulterers admire other
men's wives, and think cheap of their own.

Sec. X. And yet it makes much for contentedness of mind to look for the
most part at home and to our own condition, or if not, to look at the
case of people worse off than ourselves, and not, as most people do, to
compare ourselves with those who are better off. For example, those who
are in chains think those happy who are freed from their chains, and
they again freemen, and freemen citizens, and they again the rich, and
the rich satraps, and satraps kings, and kings the gods, content with
hardly anything short of hurling thunderbolts and lightning. And so they
ever want something above them, and are never thankful for what they
have.

"I care not for the wealth of golden Gyges,"

and,

"I never had or envy or desire
To be a god, or love for mighty empire,
Far distant from my eyes are all such things."

But this, you will say, was the language of a Thasian. But you will find
others, Chians or Galatians or Bithynians, not content with the share of
glory or power they have among their fellow-citizens, but weeping
because they do not wear senators' shoes; or, if they have them, that
they cannot be praetors at Rome; or, if they get that office, that they
are not consuls; or, if they are consuls, that they are only proclaimed
second and not first. What is all this but seeking out excuses for being
unthankful to fortune, only to torment and punish oneself? But he that
has a mind in sound condition, does not sit down in sorrow and dejection
if he is less renowned or rich than some of the countless myriads of
mankind that the sun looks upon, "who feed on the produce of the wide
world,"[734] but goes on his way rejoicing at his fortune and life, as
far fairer and happier than that of myriads of others. In the Olympian
games it is not possible to be the victor by choosing one's competitors.
But in the race of life circumstances allow us to plume ourselves on
surpassing many, and to be objects of envy rather than to have to envy
others, unless we pit ourselves against a Briareus or a Hercules.
Whenever then you admire anyone carried by in his litter as a greater
man than yourself, lower your eyes and look at those that bear the
litter. And when you think the famous Xerxes happy for his passage over
the Hellespont, as a native of those parts[735] did, look too at those
who dug through Mount