Miscellanies 6.2.13

And when Hesiod had said: “For a man wins nothing better than a wife, a good one; and nothing more chilling than a bad one,” Simonides said: “A man wins no possession better than a good wife, nor more chilling than a bad one.” Again, when Epicharmus said: “Think both as one who will live a long time and as one who will live a short time,” Euripides writes: “Why then, standing on a prosperity that is not sure, do we not live as pleasantly as we can, without grief?” Likewise, when the comic poet Diphilus said: “The life of men is easily changed,” Posidippus says: “No one, being human, has passed his life free from grief, nor again has he remained unfortunate to the end.” And Plato speaks in keeping with this, writing about man as a changeable living being. Again, when Euripides said: “O toilsome life of mortals, how slippery you lie in everything! Some things you increase, others you waste away; and there is no fixed boundary set for mortals to reach, except when the chill end of death arrives, sent from Zeus,” Diphilus writes: “There is no life that does not possess evils: griefs, cares, robberies, tortures, diseases. From these death, appearing like a physician, gives rest to those who have them, putting them to rest in sleep.”