is valour subdued all the wild
monsters of legend, beast or man, and purged all the world of them.
Even so our philosopher was a very Hercules in the conquest of anger,
envy, avarice, lust, and all the other monstrous sins that beset the
human soul. He expelled all these pests from their minds, purged
households, and tamed vice. Nay, he too went half-naked and was
distinguished by the club he carried, aye, and he sprang from that
same Thebes, where Hercules, men say, was born. Even before he became
Crates pure and simple, he was accounted one of the chief men in
Thebes: his family was noble, his establishment numerous, his house
had a fair and ample porch: his lands were rich and his clothing
sumptuous. But later, when he understood that the wealth which had
been transmitted to him, carried with it no safeguard whereon he might
lean as on a staff in the ways of life, but that all was fragile and
transitory, that all the wealth that is in all the world was of no
assistance to a virtuous life....

_On the uncertainty of fortune._

23. Imagine some good ship, wrought by skilled hands, well built
within and fairly adorned without, with rudder answering to the touch,
taut rigging, lofty mast, resplendent tops, and shining sails; in a
word, supplied with all such gear as may serve either for use or the
delight of the eye. Imagine all this and then think how easily, if the
tempest and no helmsman be her guide, the deep may engulf her or the
reefs grind her to pieces with all her goodly gear. Again, when
physicians enter a sick man's house to visit him, none of them bids
the invalid be of good cheer on account of the exquisite balconies
with which they see the house to be adorned, nor on account of the
fretted ceilings all overlaid with gold, or the multitudes of handsome
boys and youths that stand about the couch in his chamber. Rather the
physician sits down by the man's bedside, takes his hand, feels it and
explores the beat and movements of the pulse. If he discovers any
irregularity or disorder, he informs his patient that he is seriously
ill. Our rich man is bidden fast: on that day mid all the abundant
store of his own house, he touches not even bread: and meanwhile all
his slaves feast and are merry, and their servile state makes no
difference to them.

_An improvisation._

24. You have asked me to give you an improvisation. Listen then. You
have heard me speak prepared, now hear me unprepared. I think I risk