Complete Poetic Works, Volume 7

...are: such things as have cast you into this current fear. Did I not say to you, when you were incessantly rebuking me for warning you of the truth, that I was a better friend to you than your flatterers? Did I not also add this: that wounds from friends are more worthy of trust than the kisses of enemies that offer themselves freely? original: "fide digniora esse vulnera ab amicis, quàm ultro ingerentia se oscula inimicorum." This is a reference to the biblical Book of Proverbs 27:6, suggesting that honest criticism is better than false praise. If you had endured my wounds, their kisses would by no means have brought this destruction upon you. For my wounds bring health; their kisses bring an incurable disease.

Where are your cup-bearers now? Where are those who, in the public square, forced the people to step out of your path and proclaimed your praises to everyone? They have fled; they have abandoned your friendship. They seek their own safety through your dangers. The theaters, which you cultivated with such great devotion and for whose sake you were often offended by our warnings, have both betrayed you and destroyed you.

And I say these things now, not to insult one who is fallen, but because I desire to make those who still stand more secure. I do not wish to rub the sores of the wounded, but to preserve those not yet wounded in a state of health. I do not wish to sink one who is already tossed by the waves, but to instruct those who sail with favorable winds, lest they be carried into the deep along with the ship itself.

How can this be avoided? Surely, if we consider the mutability of human affairs. mutability: the quality of being constantly subject to change or reversal. For if that man had feared change, he would not now be suffering it. But since he could be corrected neither by advice from his own household nor from outsiders, at least you, who are lifted up by riches, should turn his calamity into your own profit.

For nothing is weaker than human affairs. Therefore, by whatever name you signify their worthlessness, you will have said less than the truth of the matter: whether you call them smoke, or hay, or a dream, or spring flowers, or anything else. They are so fragile, and more like nothing than Nothing itself. That they are not only nothing, but also stand on a precipice, is apparent from this: Who was more exalted than this man? Did he not excel in riches across the whole world? Did he not climb to the very heights of honors? Did not everyone fear...