Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/404

382 rejecteth, he doth abandon and betray himself, and look, whosoever come to succour and help him, those he shunneth and repelleth from him. Many crosses there be and calamities in the world, otherwise moderate and tolerable, which superstition maketh mischievous and incurable.

That ancient king Midas in old time being troubled and disquieted much in his mind (as it should seem) with certain dreams and visions, in the end fell into such a melancholy and despair, that willingly he made himself away by drinking bull's blood. And Aristodemus, king of Messenians, in that war which he waged against the Lacedaemonians, when it happened that the dogs yelled and howled like wolves, and that there grew about the altar of his house the herb called dent de chien, or dog's grass, whereupon the wizards and soothsayers were afraid (as of some tokens presaging evil), conceived such an inward grief and took so deep a thought, that he fell into desperation and killed himself. As for Nicias, the general of the Athenian army, haply it had been far better that by the examples of Midas and Aristodemus he had been delivered and rid from his superstition, than for fear of the shadow occasioned by the eclipse of the moon to have sitten still as he did and do nothing, until the enemies environed and enclosed him round about; and after that forty thousand of Athenians were either put to the sword or taken prisoners, to come alive into the hands of his enemies, and lose his life with shame and dishonour: for in the darkness occasioned by the opposition of the earth just in the midst, between the sun and the moon, whereby her body was shadowed and deprived of light, there was nothing for him to fear, and namely at such a time when there was cause for him to have stood upon his feet and served valiantly in the field; but the darkness of blind superstition was dangerous, to trouble and confound the judgment of a man who was possessed therewith, at the very instant when his occasions required most the use of his wit and understanding:

A good and skilful pilot seeing this, doth well to pray unto the gods for to escape the imminent danger, and to invocate and call upon those saints for help which they after call saviours: but