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Whom, then, do these things make wretched?
The unmanly and irrational, the unpracticed and untrained, those who retain from childhood their notions
unchanged. Therefore Fortune is not a producer of
[p. 373]
perfect unhappiness if she does not have Vice to
co-operate with her. For as a thread saws through
the bone that has been soaked in ashes and vinegar,
and as men bend and fashion ivory when it has been
made soft and pliable by beer, but cannot do so
otherwise, so Fortune, falling upon that which is of
itself ill-affected and soft as the result of Vice, gouges
it out and inj ures it. And just as the Parthian poison,1
though harmful to no one else nor injurious to those
who touch it and carry it about, if it is merely brought
into the presence of wounded men, it straightway
destroys them, since they receive its effluence because
of their previous susceptibility ; so he who is liable to
have his soul crushed by Fortune must have within
himself some festering wound of his own in order that
it may make whatever befalls him from without
pitiful and lamentable.
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. W. C. Helmbold. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1939. 6.
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