Miscellanies 6.2.8

Again, when Theognis says: “An exile has no friend and faithful companion,” Euripides has composed: “Every friend flees out of the way of a poor man in exile.” And when Epicharmus said: “O daughter, alas for your fortune! You live with a young man, though you are older,” and added: “For he takes another, a young girl, and she in turn seeks some other man,” Euripides writes: “It is an evil to yoke a young wife to a young man; for he longs to take another woman's bed, and she, lacking him, plots evil.” Again, when Euripides said in the Medea, “For a bad man's gifts bring no profit,” Sophocles in the Ajax the Whip-Bearer speaks that iambic line: “Enemies' gifts are no gifts, and bring no profit.” And when Solon composed: “For excess breeds insolence, when much prosperity follows,” Theognis writes outright: “Excess breeds insolence, when prosperity follows a bad man.” Hence Thucydides too says in his Histories: “Most people, to whom unexpected good fortune comes most suddenly and in the shortest time, are wont to turn to insolence.” And Philistus likewise imitates the same, saying: “Much good fortune that comes to men in accordance with reason is safer than what comes contrary to expectation; and so too with misfortune; for those who fare well contrary to expectation and unexpectedly are wont above all to turn to insolence.”