How short,
alas! eyes the poor wretch of his design! but 'tis not the sea only we
should fear: one the wars deceive; another by some accidental ruin,
even at the altar, meets a grave; third by a fall in running
anticipates his arrival to the goal; eating oft kills the greedy; and
abstinence the temperate. If we rightly consider it in this sea of
life we may be shipwrackt every where; but we vainly lament the want
of burial to a wretch that's drowned; as if it concern'd the perishing
carcass, whether flames, worms, or fishes were its cannibals.
Whatever way you are consum'd, the end of all 's the same. But fish,
they object, will tear their bodies; as if their teeth were less
gentle than the flames; a punishment that we believe is the highest we
can inflict on slaves that have provok'd us; therefore what madness is
't to trouble our lives with the cares of our burial after we're dead;
when the best of us may meet the fate he vainly strives with so much
diligence to avoid?"
After these reflections, we perform'd the last office for the dead,
and tho' his enemies, honour'd him with a funeral pile; but while
Eumolpus was making an epitaph, his eyes roam'd here and there, to
find an image that might raise his fancy.
When we had willingly acquitted our selves of this piece of humanity
to Lycas, we pursu'd our design'd journey, and all in a sweat soon.
reacht the head of a neighbouring hill, from whence we discovered a
town seated on the top of a high mountain; we did not know it, till a
shepherd inform'd us 'twas Crotona; the most ancient and once most
flourishing city of Italy; when we enquir'd of him what sort of people
inhabited this renown'd place, and what kind of commerce they chiefly
maintain'd, since they were impoverish'd by so many wars?
"Gentlemen," said he, "if you have designs of trading, you must go
another way; but if you're of the admir'd sort of men, that have the
thriving qualifications of lying and cheating, you're in the direct
path to business; for in this city no learning flourisheth, eloquence
has not a room here; temperance, good manners, nor any virtue can meet
a reward; assure your selves of finding but two sorts of men, and they
are the cheated, and those that cheat.
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