This likewise greatly obstructs the tranquillity of the mind, that our desires are immoderate and not suited to our abilities of attainment, which, like sails beyond the proportion of the vessel, help only to overset it; so that, being blown up with extravagant expectations, if ill success frustrates our attempts, we presently curse our stars and accuse Fortune, when we ought rather to lay the blame upon our enterprising folly. For we do not reckon him unfortunate who will shoot with a ploughshare, and let slip an ox at a hare. Nor is he born under an unlucky influence who cannot catch a buck with a sling or drag-net; for it was the weakness and perverseness of his mind which inflamed him on to impossible things. The partial love of himself is chiefly in fault, which infuseth a vicious inclination to arrogate, and an insatiable ambition to attempt every thing. For they are not content with the affluence of riches and the accomplishments of the mind, that they are robust, have a complaisance of humor and strength of brain for company, that they are privadoes to princes and governors of cities, unless they have dogs of great sagacity and swiftness, horses of a generous strain, nay, unless their quails and cocks are better than other men’s. Old Dionysius, not being satisfied that he was the greatest potentate of his time, grew angry, even to a frenzy, that Philoxenus the poet exceeded him in the sweetness of his voice, and Plato in the subtleties of disputation; therefore he condemned one to the quarries, and sold the other into Aegina. But Alexander was of another temper; for when Criso the famous runner contended with him for swiftness, and seemed to be designedly lagging behind and yielding the race, he was in a great rage with him. And Achilles in Homer spake very well, when he said: — None of the Greeks for courage me excel; Let others have the praise of speaking well. When Megabyzus the Persian came into the shop of Apelles, and began to ask some impertinent questions concerning his art, the famous painter checked him into silence with this reprimand: As long as thou didst hold thy peace, thou didst appear to be a man of condition, and I paid a deference to the eclat of thy purple and the lustre of thy gold; but now, since thou art frivolous, thou exposest thyself to the laughter even of my boys that mix the colors. Some think the Stoics very childish, when they hear them affirm that the wise man must not only deserve that appellation for his prudence, be of exact justice and great fortitude, but must likewise have all the flowers of a rhetorician and the conduct of a general, must have the elegancies of a poet, be very wealthy, and called a king; but these good men claim all these titles for themselves, and if they do not receive them, they grow peevish and are presently out of temper. But the qualifications of the Gods themselves are different; for the one is styled the deity of war, another of the oracle, a third of traffic; and Jupiter makes Venus preside over marriages and be goddess of the nuptial bed, the delicacy of her sex being unapt for martial affairs.