Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/347

Rh settle principally upon that wheat which is the fairest and come to full perfection; and likewise stick unto the roses that are most out, and in the very pride of their flowering; even so envy taketh commonly unto the best-conditioned persons, and to such as are growing to the height of virtue and honour: whereas contrariwise, the lewdest qualities that be, and wicked in the highest degree, do mightily move and augment hatred: and thereupon it was that the Athenians had them in such detestable hatred, and abhorred them so deadly, who by their slanderous imputations brought good Socrates their fellow-citizen to his death, insomuch as they would not vouchsafe either to give them a coal or two of fire, or light their candles, or deign them an answer when they asked a question; nay, they would not wash or bathe together with them in the same water, but commanded those servitors in the bains which were called Parachytae, that is to say, drawers and laders of water into the bathing vessels, to let forth that as polluted and defiled wherein they had washed; whereupon they seeing themselves thus excommunicate and not able to endure this public hatred which they had incurred, being weary of their lives, hung and strangled themselves.

On the contrary side, it is often seen that the excellency of virtue, honour and glory, and the extraordinary success of men is so much, that it doth extinguish and quench all envy. For it is not a likely or credible matter that any man bare envy unto Cyrus or Alexander the Great, after they were become the only ords and monarchs of the whole world: but like as the sun, when he is directly and plumb over the head or top of anything, auseth either no shadow at all, or the same very small and hort, by the reason that his light overspread eth round about; even so, when the prosperity of a man is come to the highest point and have gotten over the head of envy, then the said envy retireth and is either gone altogether, or else drawn within a little room by reason of that brightness overspreading it: but contrariwise the grandence of fortune and puissance in the enemies doth not one jot abbreviate or allay the hatred of their evil-willers; and that this is true may appear by the example of Alexander above named, who had not one that envied him, but many enemies he found, and those malicious, and by them in the end he was traitorously forlayed and murdered.

Semblably, adversities may well stay envy and cause it cease, but enmity and hatred they do not abolish; for men never give over to despite their enemies, no, not when they are brought