Oration 63
Imperial Dio Chrysostom Greek- Men seem to be disposed toward Fortune as voyagers are toward favouring winds: gladly do they keep to their course, and those who have the wind at their back arrive where they wished to go, while those left becalmed in the midst of the sea lament in vain. Just so, then, when Fortune is present men rejoice and take delight, but when she is absent they have grief and helplessness. For all things come from this divinity; indeed, the resourceless appears resourceful, the weak strong, the ugly beautiful, and poverty becomes wealth. 2. When Fortune is upon the sea, at any rate, the ship sails fair; and when she appears in the air, the farmer prospers. The soul too rejoices when buoyed up by Fortune; but if Fortune leave it, it survives as in a tomb within the body. For neither, if a man speaks, does he win renown, nor, if he acts, does he succeed, nor is there any profit in being well endowed, once Fortune has departed. For when she is not present, neither education has come to fruition nor any other good thing. Nay, even virtue is then admired for its deeds, when Fortune is present; but if it be left alone, it is but the unrealized account of a fine thing. She is, for men at war, victory; for men keeping peace, concord; for men marrying, goodwill; for lovers, pleasure; and, in a word, success in everything that is done. 3. When Fortune forsakes a land, then it quakes and trembles, and the fair things upon it are scattered abroad: this is the sickness of a land, the absence of Fortune. And as a ship is borne at random and quickly sinks, bereft of its helmsman, and as walls fall down when their foundations have given way, so a whole city goes to ruin for want of Fortune. Athens was once wronged in the matter of her orators, and Demosthenes was led off, when Fortune no longer watched over Athens. To me it seems that the very heaven has Fortune whenever it holds clear weather and not darkness. 4. One ought also to observe her resourcefulness. Indeed, a man who had already fallen from his ship in the open sea found the means of living when Fortune came. And it is worth telling, too, what befell the painter Apelles through Fortune. For, as the story goes, he was painting a horse—not a horse of labour but of war. It was lofty in the neck and rearing, its ears erect, fierce of eye, as though present from the battle, with the fury of the race in its glance; its feet were borne up in the air, lightly touching the ground by turns. And the charioteer mastered the bit, controlling by the rein the warlike plunging of the horse. 5. But while the picture had everything true to life, it lacked the colour of foam, such as would arise from blood and moisture mingled in a continuous blending—the panting driving the moisture from the mouth, which foamed at the cutting of the breath, while the chafing of the bit sprinkled blood upon the foam. He could not, then, find the means to paint the foam of a horse spent in the contest. Being at a loss the longer he tried, at last, in despair, he flung the sponge at the picture, about the bit. And the sponge, holding many colours like blood-stained foam, fitted the colour to the picture. And Apelles, beholding it, rejoiced at this work of Fortune wrought in his despair of art, and completed the picture not through art but through Fortune. 6. And what else made Heracles the greatest of men? Why, he gripped and throttled the lion, and chased winged creatures from the air, and took the hydra from the marsh, crushing its heads; nor did the boar about Erymanthus frighten him; and he came even to the West and brought back the fruit of the tree there. He took the cattle of Geryon, which were fair, and admonished Diomedes the Thracian to give his horses grain to eat and not men, and convicted the Amazons of being women. All these things he accomplished with Fortune attending him. 7. Nor are the riddling images of the ancients about her ill conceived. For some set her upon a razor's edge, others upon a sphere, others gave her a rudder to hold; and those who depict her in nobler fashion gave her the horn of Amaltheia, full and teeming with the fruits of the seasons—the horn that Heracles broke off from Achelous in their contest. The razor, then, signifies the sheer brink of good fortune; the sphere, that her change is easy, for the divine happens always to be in motion; the rudder shows that Fortune steers the life of men; and the horn of Amaltheia signifies the bestowal of good things and happiness. Let us not, then, give the name of "evil" to any Fortune; for neither does anyone say that virtue is evil, nor that the good is evil.