ink your lot one to be envied,
As that of any man who free from danger
Passes his life unknown and in obscurity."[741]

By such reflections as these one may wean oneself from that discontent
with one's fortune, which makes one's own condition look low and mean
from too much admiring one's neighbour's.

Sec. XII. Another thing, which is a great hindrance to peace of mind, is
not to proportion our desires to our means, but to carry too much sail,
as it were, in our hopes of great things and then, if unsuccessful, to
blame destiny and fortune, and not our own folly. For he is not
unfortunate who wishes to shoot with a plough, or hunt the hare with an
ox; nor has he an evil genius opposed to him, who does not catch deer
with fishing nets, but merely is the dupe of his own stupidity and folly
in attempting impossibilities. Self-love is mainly to blame, making
people fond of being first and aspiring in all matters, and insatiably
desirous to engage in everything. For people not only wish at one and
the same time to be rich, and learned, and strong, and boon-companions,
and agreeable, and friends of kings, and governors of cities, but they
are also discontented if they have not dogs and horses and quails and
cocks of the first quality. Dionysius the elder was not content with
being the most powerful monarch of his times, but because he could not
beat Philoxenus the poet in singing, or surpass Plato in dialectics, was
so angry and exasperated that he put the one to work in his stone
quarries, and sent the other to AEgina and sold him there. Alexander was
of a different spirit, for when Crisso the famous runner ran a race with
him, and seemed to let the king outrun him on purpose, he was greatly
displeased. Good also was the spirit of Achilles in Homer, who, when he
said,

"None of the Achaean warriors is a match
For me in war,"

added,

"Yet in the council hall
Others there are who better are than me."[742]

And when Megabyzus the Persian visited the studio of Apelles, and began
to chatter about art, Apelles stopped him and said, "While you kept
silence you seemed to be somebody from your gold and purple, but now
these lads that are grinding colours are laughing at your nonsense." But
some who think the Stoics only talk idly, in styling their wise man not
only prudent and just and brave but also orator and general and poet and
rich man and king, yet claim for themselves all those titles,