History of Monsters 167

sponded by saying: "In choosing an evil, I chose the smallest one." And when Protagoras was asked why he had married his daughter to an enemy, he replied, "Because I had nothing worse to give him." This same philosopher, upon seeing an old woman elegantly adorned, exclaimed: "If you are dressed for men, you are mistaken; if for the grave, you are ready." And according to Aristippus, a woman who beautifies her face with pigments only reveals a deformed soul.

Solon, once asked whether one should take a wife, replied: "If you marry an ugly one, you will have a punishment; if a beautiful one, you will have someone shared by all." Socrates, as recorded by Laertius, used to say that a woman of graceful and extraordinary beauty was like a temple built over a sewer.

From here we must turn to aphorisms regarding human misery. To this end, Aristotle (according to Stobaeus), when asked what a man was, replied: an example of weakness, the spoil of time, the plaything of fortune, the image of inconstancy, the balance-scale of envy and calamity—and for the rest, merely phlegm and bile. Hence Philip of Macedon, as recounted by Rhodiginus, after he had crushed the wealth of the Athenians at Chaeronea, began to be driven by such pride that he believed himself no longer subject to misfortune. Yet, coming to his senses and foreseeing that some evil might hang over him after such great success, he assigned a duty to one of his royal pages. Every day, as soon as it dawned, the boy was to enter his quarters and cry out: "Remember, O King, that you are not a God, but a man exposed to many hardships and miseries." For the same reason, Democritus, when asked what he thought of the lot of men, asserted that human fortune was miserable; for good things rarely happen even to those who seek them, while unbidden evils arrive beyond all expectation.

Hence Aeneas Sylvius, hearing people disputing over the misery of human life, declared that our life is a comedy, the final act of which is played out in death. Bias also used to spread the idea that a man ought to measure his life as if he were going to live for both a long and a short time; indeed, Antiphon compared the life of man to a single day's imprisonment. Regarding this, when Xerxes saw the entire Hellespont covered with his ships, and all the shores and the plains of Abydos filled with his numerous army, he shed tears. When questioned about this, he stated that he wept thinking how brief human life was, since of such a vast multitude, not a single person would still be alive a hundred years later.

Likewise, when Socrates was asked how a life could be led without troubles, he denied that it could be done in any way, since it is not permitted for those inhabiting cities and living among men to pass their time without hardships. For this reason Silenus, as told by Plutarch, when captured by Midas and asked what was best for man, replied that it was best never to be born, or if born, to be abolished as soon as possible. Solon also, when asked what a man was, is said to have uttered these words: "Corruption at birth, a beast throughout life, and food for worms in death." This is why Francis Borgia, as reported by Ribadeneyra, when greatly afflicted by fever, used to exclaim that nothing in human affairs is permanent. Later, Justus Lipsius included this in his own epitaph, which can be seen at Leuven:

All human things are smoke, shadow, vanity,

The image of a stage, and to put it briefly, nothing.

Alexander too, according to Plutarch, though he was hailed as a God everywhere because of his successes, understood himself to be mortal from two things: sleep and sexual intercourse. For sleep reflects the image of cold death, and the act of sex is akin to a type of epilepsy. Indeed, when this same Alexander was struck by an arrow during the siege of a certain city and was forced to abandon his post and call for a surgeon, he said: "Everyone proclaims me the son of Jupiter, yet this wound warns me that I am mortal." With good reason, then, the Emperor Ferdinand used to attest that man is far inferior to the heavens, the earth, the sea, the trees, and the brute animals; for all of these can sense a coming storm, yet man can neither foresee his own misfortunes nor provide for them.

Furthermore, Diogenes (as noted by Laertius), once contemplating the governors of cities, the philosophers, and the lawmakers in human life, proclaimed man to be the most excellent of all living creatures. But when he then considered the interpreters of dreams, as well as those who are slaves to glory and riches, he exclaimed that nothing seemed more foolish to him than man—implying that while the human intellect is suited for the pursuit of the best things, it is also prone to the approval of vices. For this reason Favorinus, as recorded by Stobaeus, declared that men were partly ridic-