the blind man carries the lame man on his shoulders; for such a great service, he returns the eyes of the lame man as a mutual gift. Two imperfect beings come together into a single body, and what is lacking in one companion, each provides to the other.

Antiphilus’s six-line poem followed the exact same theme, translated into Latin as follows:

Both were beggars—one blind, one lame—and each removed the other's misfortune through skill. Raising the lame man onto his shoulders, he who lacked sight attempted to walk a path made certain by using the lame man’s eyes. Together they joined what fate had denied to each; thus, a single nature was sufficient for them both.

From this, we must conclude that to alleviate the hardships of human life, one person needs another. Just as not every soil produces every crop, no single person possesses an abundance of everything. For this reason, common proverbs circulate: "One man is no man," "Hand washes hand," "Many hands make light work," and others of this kind, which were mentioned in the section on Adages. Similarly, Pierre Coustau presents an image of two men: one tries in vain to rip out a horse's tail all at once, while the other, by pulling out individual hairs, eventually removes the entire tail. The title is "An Example of the Wise and the Foolish." The lesson to be drawn is that all things are accomplished through the persistence of time, which is why Ovid rightly sang: "In time, even the wrath of Carthaginian lions is tamed."

The same author depicts one man weeping and another laughing, under the title "On Human Life." These figures represent Democritus and Heraclitus. Heraclitus would greet human follies with mourning whenever he left his house, as everything seemed to him worthy of lamentation. On the other hand, Democritus laughed for the same reason, viewing human actions as mere child's play. Indeed, if they were to come back to life today, they would find even greater cause for grief or laughter, as things grow worse by the day. This gave Horace the occasion to sing:

What does destructive time not diminish? Our parents' generation, worse than our grandparents', bore us—more wicked still—who will soon produce an even more corrupt offspring.

Finally, Alciatus presents two figures of men: he adds the shape of cicadas to the clothing of one, and a picture of a crescent moon to the shoes of the other, with the title "The Noble and the Well-Born." Aristotle drew a distinction between being "noble" and being "well-born" [generosus]: "noble" refers to those from a good lineage, whereas "well-born" refers to those who do not degenerate from their own nature. Elsewhere, the same philosopher asserts that it is more distinguished to be called well-born than noble, since a noble person shines only by the virtue and glory of their ancestors, while the well-born man is commended for both his own virtues and those of his forebears.

Thus, all well-born men are noble, though we need not accept the reverse of this proposition, for not all noblemen are well-born; indeed, some nobles degenerate from the virtue of their ancestors due to a lowliness of spirit. Among the Athenians, therefore, the cicada was a symbol of nobility. They would pin them in their hair to demonstrate to everyone that they were noble and indigenous to the land. For this reason, the Athenians were nicknamed *tettigophoroi*, or "cicada-bearers." The reasoning behind this seems to be that, among all living creatures, cicadas are the most characteristically indigenous, as they live and die in the same region where they are born. Consequently, we might rightly call boastful and vainglorious men "covered in cicadas."

Furthermore, because the Romans were seen to surpass other peoples in nobility, it is recorded that they wore a lunar shape on their shoes. This was either to signify the condition of the Roman Empire—which grew rapidly and then, over time, waned like the moon—or, in the opinion of others, to brand proud men with a reminder of the instability of human affairs. The moon is considered a symbol of this instability, passing from darkness into light, and back into obscuri