[130] And the other things of the body are they not dreams? Is not beauty but for a day, withering before it flowers; health insecure because of the infirmities that lie ready to attack it; strength an easy victim of the diseases which arise from numberless causes; accuracy of senses unstable and easily upset by the onset of some little humour?
[131] As for the external goods, who does not know their uncertainty? Magnificent fortunes have often been dissolved in a single day. Multitudes who have won the first place with the highest honour have passed over to the unglorious lot of the unmeritable and obscure. The greatest kings have seen their empires overthrown when occasion gives a slight turn to the scale.
[132] What I say is vouched for by Dionysius of Corinth, who was the tyrant of Sicily, but when he fell from power fled to Corinth and there this great sovereign became a teacher of the rudiments.
[133] Another witness is Croesus, the king of Lydia, wealthiest of monarchs, who hoped to overthrow the empire of the Persians, and not only lost his own as well but was taken prisoner and on the point of being burnt alive.
[134] That these are dreams is attested not only by single men, but by cities, nations, countries, by Greeks, by the world of the barbarians, by dwellers on the mainland, by dwellers on islands, by Europe, by Asia, by West, by East. For nothing at all anywhere has remained in the same condition; everywhere all has been subject to changes and vicissitudes.
[135] Egypt once held the sovereignty over many nations, but now is in slavery. The Macedonians in their day of success flourished so greatly that they held dominion over all the habitable world, but now they pay to the tax-collectors the yearly tributes imposed by their masters.
[136] Where is the house of the Ptolemies, and the fame of the several Successors whose light once shone to the utmost boundaries of land and sea? Where are the liberties of the independent nations and cities, where again the servitude of the vassals? Did not the Persians once rule the Parthians, and now the Parthians rule the Persians? So much do human affairs twist and change, go backward and forward as on the draught-board.
[137] Some picture for their future a long and unlimited run of luck, and the outcome is great calamity, and when they press eagerly to secure what they think to be their heritage of good they find terrible misfortunes, while on the contrary when they expect evil what they meet with is good.
[138] Athletes mightily proud of the strength and muscle and robustness of their bodies, hoping for undoubted victory, have often failed to pass the test and been excluded from the arena, or if admitted, have been vanquished, while others who despaired of taking even the second place have won the first prize and worn the crown.
[139] Some who embarked in summer, the safe sailing season, have been shipwrecked; others who sailed in winter, expecting to be capsized, have reached the harbour in security. Of merchants, some hurry to what seems certain gain, and little know the disasters that await them. Again, when they reckon that they will suffer loss, they win great profits.
[140] Thus fortunes are uncertain either way, and human affairs swing as on a scale with unequal weights, carried lightly up or pressing the balance down, and terrible is the uncertainty and vast the darkness which envelops the events of life. We flounder as though in deep sleep, unable to compass anything by accurate reasoning or to grasp it vigorously and firmly, for all are like shadows and phantoms.
[141] And as in processions the front part passes on and is lost to sight, and in the winter torrents the stream in its course speeds past us and by its violence and rapidity outstrips our observation, so too the events of life rush along past us, and though they make a show of remaining do not stay even for a moment, but are ever swept away.
[142] And those who are awake, who in the uncertainty of apprehension differ nothing from the sleeping, deceive themselves and think that they are capable of discerning differences in the nature of things by incontrovertible processes of reason. Each sense impedes their attainment of knowledge, seduced whether by the sights it sees or by the sounds it hears, or by varieties of flavours, or by scents of different quality, to which it turns aside and is dragged along with them, and prevents the soul as a whole from standing erect and advancing without stumbling as along a high road. And thus the senses produce the confusion of high with low and great with small, and all that is akin to inequality and irregularity, and the soul’s sight swims perforce in the great dizziness which they create.