Page:King Alfred's Version of the Consolations of Boethius.djvu/101

 do another, and not suffer the same from him; or, if not from the same man, then from another? We have also learnt about the savage tyrant Bosiris the Egyptian. It was the custom of this oppressor to receive every comer with great honour, and treat him as a friend immediately on his coming; but afterwards, before it was time for his departure, he would have him put to death. Now it happened that Erculus [Hercules], son of Jobe [Jove], came to him, and the king thought to treat him as he had treated many a former visitor, drowning him in the river called Nile. But Erculus was the stronger, and drowned him instead, very rightly and by God's will, even as he had drowned others. And Regulus too, that most famous captain that fought against the Africans; he had won an almost unspeakable victory over them, and, when the slaughter was over, he had the enemy tied together and laid out in heaps. But very soon after it came to pass that he himself was bound in their fetters. Lo, now! what is the good of power, thinkest thou, when it cannot in any wise prevent him that holds it from suffering the same ill that he once did to others? Is not power in this case a thing of naught? Again, dost thou think that if honour and power were wittingly good, and had control over themselves, they would obey the most infamous men as they now often do? Knowest thou not that contraries by their nature and habit may not mix nor have any intercourse? Nature abhors such admixture, which is as impossible as that good and