On Providence (The Egyptian Tale) 123–146

to the nature of the cosmos. They also come at other times, when it has been corrupted and broken by the wickedness of those who received it, when things here can be saved in no other way. So God is not moved for small matters, nor when this or that goes wrong. Truly great is that one man for whose sake one of the blessed race will come here. But when the whole order and the great things are perishing, then they must come, to give the beginning of another ordering. So let people who have evils of their own choosing not be indignant, nor blame the gods for not providing for them; for providence demands that they too contribute their own part. In the region of evils it is no wonder that there are evils; the wonder is if anything here is not such. This

… to be at strife with one another over the turning toward virtue and its use. Farewell. As for your brother, if you are wise, prevent your own fate and the Egyptians' by destroying him first; for you may. But if you give in and grow soft, you will wait for the gods too late." With these words he departed by the same road as the gods. The son was left behind, a being too good for the earth, who at once set himself eagerly to banish evils from it, using no force at all; he sacrificed to Persuasion, the Muses and the Graces, bringing everyone willingly into harmony with the law. And when the gods, out of reverence for the king, supplied in abundance all that the air bears and all the gifts of river and earth, he let the people have the enjoyments, while he himself gave up all ease and chose all toil, taking little sleep and a very great share of cares — in a word, being without leisure for the sake of everyone's leisure. That is why he filled individuals, households, kindreds, cities and whole nomes — all people, both those within and those outside — with good things. For he plainly practised virtue,

directing every study and every pursuit to be practised for this one end, and he offered rewards to the best at ruling people and making those they ruled like themselves. Whatever is honoured must grow, and whatever is neglected must perish. So the love of all education grew with it, both the education of the mind and that of the tongue. Those who excelled in such things were no longer to be seen among the common herd, but shone with honours from the king, as men who furnished an art that serves wisdom, since mind goes forth clothed in words; and being dressed well or badly shows the same man seemly or unseemly. So Osiris thought it right to honour preparatory education too, for he thought education the source of virtue. Piety, above all, then more than at any other time made its home among the Egyptians. These are goods of the soul, and the Egyptians flourished in them under Osiris's kingship, so that the land was like a school of virtue, the children looking to the one leader, doing the one thing they saw and saying the one thing they heard. Wealth he himself neglected; but he took every care that all should have it, being most incorruptible and most generous. He remitted taxes for cities, and to those in need

he gave; he raised up what had fallen and healed what was about to fall. One city he raised to greatness, another he adorned with beauty, another that did not exist he founded, another that had been deserted he resettled. Each individual, of course, had to enjoy the common goods; but he did not tire of stooping to care for this or that person too, so that in his time no human being was seen weeping. Nor was Osiris ignorant of who needed what, and what kept so-and-so from being happy. One man longed for just honour, and he gave it; another, because he devoted himself to books and had no leisure to earn his bread, he gave meals in the prytaneum; another cared nothing for human honour and was very well fed by his surplus, but perhaps was ashamed at the public burdens — this too he did not fail to know, but released him from the burden, not because he was pestered but rather pestering the man by giving before being asked, thinking out of reverence for wisdom that such a man should be his own master and free, like a sacred animal released to a god. In short, no one missed his due — unless he was owed some punishment;

to him he did not give his due. For he made it his ambition to overcome even the most shameless by gentleness of mind and kind deeds, and in this way he thought he would get the better of his brother and his conspiracy, changing their natures by the abundance of his virtue — in this one thing mistaken in his judgment. For envy is not stopped by virtue, but rather kindled. If it is its nature to grow upon good things, then the more good things advance, the more its grief at them grows too; and this is what the sullen brother suffered at the reign of Osiris. As soon as Osiris took over the government, he nearly perished, beating his wretched head on the ground and dashing it against columns. For many days he took no food, though he was most gluttonous; he refused drink, though he was most fond of wine. He longed for sleep but got none; he was held by wakefulness, and

tried hard to drive it off, shutting his eyes on purpose to free his soul from the goads of memory. But memory is most contentious toward one who wishes to lay it down, so that even with his eyes shut the image of his ills was there; and if sleep ever crept upon him, he fared more wretchedly in a dream, seeing before his eyes that hill, those votes, all those hands for his brother. When he started up, glad in his hatred of the hard vision, his ears buzzed for a long time with the sound of the acclaimers. Nor could he bear to stay still, his soul fretting; and when he peeped out of the house, misfortunes met him: in speeches, in deeds, in songs, Osiris was all in all — how handsome to look at, how wise in speech, the new king; his greatness of mind not boastful, his gentleness not abject. So he fell sick again and shut himself in, not knowing what to do with his life, neither he nor … His wife too, another monstrous evil, her own beautician, insatiable of theatre and marketplace, wishing and believing that everyone's eyes were fastened on her, had made her husband's fall from the kingship a greater misfortune still, for she thought that otherwise

she would display her public life on a larger stage and luxuriate in the power. Typhos had been captured by her, though he was already an old man, like a boy just beginning in love; and part of his misfortune was his shame before the woman, to whom he had boasted that he would hold the greatest office and share the power with her. Even in private life she was a most conspicuous creature, eager to be admired for the most opposite things: the most feminine of women at inventing luxuries, improving on beauty and adding to nature; the most reckless of men at taking up a scheme and daring an attempt, a busybody and an innovator. For these and other ends she had provided herself with women companions and men clients, all of one mind, and used them for whatever each was fitted, at home and abroad. As for Osiris's wife, that she was a wife who kept to the women's quarters people were reminded only by her little son when he was seen; and yet the child, Horus,

was a rare sight. For Osiris thought a wife's one virtue was that neither her body nor her name should pass beyond the courtyard door. So even reaching the summit of fortune did not move the modest woman from her settled ways; rather she was hidden all the more under the greatness of their power. Nor did he himself exult as though he were happier on that account; he knew that even if he had not obtained it he would have been no less happy. For each person is himself the steward of such happiness, if he wishes to be good. That is why one may see those who live with virtue, private persons and rulers alike, equally content; for every life is material for virtue. It is as we see the actors of tragedy on the stage: whoever has trained his voice well will play Creon and Telephus alike, and the rags will make no difference to his crying out grandly and finely and filling the theatre with the sound of his song; he will present the maidservant and the mistress with the same art, and whatever mask he puts on, the producer of the play requires him to play it well. So God and fortune put lives on us like masks in the great drama of the cosmos, and no life is better or worse than another; each uses it as he can. The good man can live well anywhere, whether he plays the beggar or

the monarch, and will care nothing about the mask. For the tragic actor would be ridiculous if he fled one part and chose another. If he is admired in the part of the old woman, he is crowned and proclaimed; if he disgraces himself in the part of the king, he is hissed and whistled off, and sometimes even pelted with stones. For no life is our own; we wear borrowed lives from outside, while we, the one who uses them from within, make them and show them better or worse ourselves, contestants in living dramas. So we may put them on and change them like clothes. Osiris, then — for he had been taught what is one's own and what is another's — understood that the soul is the measure of happiness. So he kept himself and his household the same in their judgments, as private persons and as rulers, undismayed by externals. But the others

lived by sense, and mind was absent. Lovers of fortune and careless, thinking what was another's their own, they were full of conceit, having waited eagerly for the kingship; and when it did not come to them, they despaired of themselves and thought nothing worth living for. It is worth saying again and often that it is the rule of people without education not to wait for their portion of life, as at table, to come round to them so that they may take it, but to snatch it first and filch it. If such a man gets it, he will be ridiculous as a disorderly fellow-guest and hateful to the one who orders the banquet, disturbing the order by his ill-breeding as far as in him lies; if he fails, he suffers the same and besides will cry like a little boy, clinging to the portion that was carried past and went to his neighbour. All this, or the like, befell Typhos: he was hateful to the gods, he wailed himself, and the matter had become a laughing-stock to the people. Not even the fact that he lay prostrate for many months and was expected to die any day aroused pity; it roused anger in the braver and laughter in the softer-minded, so that the thing was already a proverb and a question put to the pale: "Is your brother doing well?"

He would have perished justly by his own hand, given over to his evil; but as it was, his murderous wife, all too much a woman in dire straits, brought both herself and him back. She always handled him easily; she drew him away from weeping by occupying him with herself, driving out passion with passion and walling off grief with pleasure. So he struggled back to his feet, yielding in turn to the most opposite evils: now he wailed, now he lusted. More licentious boys, and more of them, then poured into the house, and revels and drinking-bouts, to waste the time with them and to soothe the fog of his soul; and they devised

other things, so that they might have the least leisure to remember the good deeds of Osiris. They made swimming-pools, and islands in the pools, and on the islands artificial hot baths, so that they might strip naked with the women in each other's presence and couple shamelessly. While they were about these things, the attempt at tyranny came into their minds, at the prompting of evil daemons, who showed them the way and now openly helped to manage the rest, being present and going about with them. For they could not bear to see their own cause ebbing away dishonoured: wisdom was practised, piety was growing, injustice had been driven out, concord had settled in, and all good things were flowering. Weeping was henceforth a mere word to the Egyptians; all was auspicious, all in good order, the state, like a single living being, having the law as its soul and moving according to it, its parts in harmony with the whole. These things drive the daemons mad; on these they fasten,

the daemons, using people akin to them as instruments. The evil is brewed in two women's quarters. In the royal city there was the commander of the foreigners, who, with his host, had been judged fit to serve as soldiers of the Egyptians. At that time they were waging an unsuccessful war against a part of their own people that had revolted, and some Egyptian villages had suffered badly, the daemons having arranged this for the drama. Visiting this man's wife by day and by night, Typhos's wife — that wily trickster, monkey-like — easily persuades the barbarian, an old and foolish woman, that she cares for her and foresees an evil coming upon them if things go as Osiris intends. For he charges them, she says, with treason, and thinks the war a staged war, the barbarians having divided into two camps by common agreement. "So he has decided," she says, "to bring him back by every force and device, and as soon as he is parted from his arms, to relieve him of command and destroy him miserably, and you, and your children, these noble ones, these lovely nurslings;

these too he has decided to slaughter before they are grown"; and with that she would weep, stroking the children's chins, putting on goodwill through pity. The old Scythian woman wailed at once, thinking she would see the horrors before her eyes and suffer them herself. The other set before her one fright after another, each day a new one, pretending to report secret plans against them: that the Scythian race would be utterly wiped out of the country, and that Osiris was working at this every day, secretly filling up the muster-rolls and making other provisions so that the Egyptians might live by themselves, having either killed or driven out the barbarians. This would be easiest once he had made their commander a private man by sending the tablet of dismissal and brought him under the law; once he had been dealt with, Osiris thinks the rest will be small work. "And now Typhos," she says, "weeps at home; for he is on your side and has always taken the barbarians' part in public life — and it was because of them that we missed the kingship, since they were not present at the time of the proclamation. Otherwise one might now be insulting the Egyptians in one's cups, and you would have their goods, using the masters as slaves. But we were not helped by you then, and now we are unable to help. We have indeed met with misfortune,

now that dangers are drawing near our friends." Having thus outgeneralled the old woman and frightened her to the extreme, as though the dangers were inescapable, when it was enough she brings forward another device to bring the barbarian back out of her fear — the woman having now learned to follow her as she led her mind about — and little by little she strengthened her and filled her with hopes. "But the plan is a great one," she said, "and needs a new kind of daring, so that we may not depend on Osiris to live, and not to live, whenever he pleases." She hinted at the rising dimly at first, then pointed to it, then uncovered it, accustoming her little by little both to hearing it and to daring it, until at last she made the frightened woman bold, showing that Osiris's power is nothing if they so wish. "For law," she said, "and the habit of honour, and what is ancient and ancestral, make the sluggish willing slaves; but the one who throws off the reins finds it weak, and he is free who has the strength, if he is not cowed in his mind by habit. Do not you suffer that, when you are in arms and Osiris is nothing, but prays to the gods, and now does business with

embassies, now judges cases, now does some other peaceful thing. If we join forces and combine — we our noble birth and you your hands — Osiris will never do harm to any Scythian. And you will not seem to be counterfeiting anything great, nor disturbing the affairs of the Egyptians, nor changing the constitution, but establishing it and arranging it better for everyone, by obtaining the rule for Typhos, who was born of the same stock as Osiris, but is older and has more right to reign over Egypt. So the Egyptians are not even likely to rise against you, since the change in the ancestral constitution will not be great. The outward form of rule will be ours, the benefit yours, and you will feast on all Egypt as on a table. Only you undertake to persuade your husband." "And you," she said, "will help me persuade him." So they did. And when he was reported riding ahead, on the one side runners sent on purpose murmured secretly about the plot, announcing by a pretence of secrecy, more plainly than those who shout aloud, what they made as if to hide; on the other, obscure letters troubled him, urging caution. And one man said openly that they must save themselves from the ambush, another more plainly, and yet another and another — all of them

partisans of Typhos and fellow conspirators of the women. On top of everything came the finishing stroke: the women, the authors of the drama, come out to meet him, and Typhos himself, coming out of the city as though for another purpose, meets him secretly, makes a compact about the rule, and persuades him to go straight from there to the deed, even if the royal city had to perish together with Osiris. This too he allowed, since the rest of Egypt would be enough for him; "and besides," he says, "so that your soldiers may grow rich, having enslaved a prosperous city and plundered the wealth of the illustrious in Egypt." This city the good Typhos pledged away in his hatred of its inhabitants for their goodwill toward Osiris; but the Scythian said he would not do it. He had reverence, he said, for the sacred council, the sober people, and the honoured things in the city; he was marching against Osiris not willingly but under necessity, Osiris himself having made the necessity; and if he succeeded in mastering him while the city was saved and the country remained unharmed, he would count it gain that no necessity of a greater evil had arisen. The myth says it will not linger over the sufferings of Osiris; for it is not its nature to dwell persistently on a painful story. Days of ill omen are kept from that time until now because of the sacred tears, and those permitted to see behold their images moving. But this, it says, is worthy also

of common hearing: for his country, for the temples, for the laws, he gave himself up to those who threatened, unless they got him, to destroy everything, and crossed the stream on a merchant ship. At once a guard was set about him, wherever on earth he was, and a barbarian assembly met about what he must suffer. There Typhos begged that he be put to death as quickly and as violently as possible; but the barbarians, though they believed they had been wronged, thought it an outrage and respected his virtue. They imposed exile; then they were ashamed of this too, and wanted the thing to be not exile but removal. They let him keep his money and possessions, though Typhos held these out to them; they touched them no more than temple property. So he was sent off under the escort of a god and of good heroes, to return at the fated times. For it was not right that the worse should prevail in Egypt, and everything change in the shortest time into disorder and dejection, while the sacred soul was in the land; and so that these things might happen, those whose work they are — the daemons — had from the start set themselves against him; and he whom they had put forward, long ago into birth and lately into tyranny, served them by feasting them with every kind of misfortune. Taxes many times greater were at once imposed on the cities, debts that did not exist were invented, and long-buried

debts were dug up. The river-dweller was assigned some inland public burden, and ships were demanded of the inlander, so that no one might have leisure to enjoy what he had. These were the most public of the evils, and there was another still more common. Those who were to be his governors over the provinces he sent out as buyers, selling the cities publicly. Those who had leased the governorship of a province — and especially the youngest of them — since the lease was agreed for one year, thought fit in that year to gather provisions for a dissolute old age. For this too was one of the practices under Typhos: the term of office was fixed by written contract with those who put down the silver. Before, one man was removed from office on a charge of wickedness, while for another the reward of virtue was higher honour, rule over more people, and a longer term. So from then on everyone everywhere wailed, each having an evil of his own to tell; in the assemblies of the peoples and in the council-chambers they were crushed by every kind of evil, so that a single cry, as it were, rose from Egypt to heaven, the echo of the common lament. The gods pitied the race and prepared to defend it. Yet they thought it best not to do so before virtue and vice had been tested still more clearly side by side, so that even people who make the least use of mind might judge by their senses which is better and which worse, and pursue the one and shun the other.

So Typhos set about cutting the kingship of Osiris entirely out of people's memory, and pursued this by many other ways and not least this: he reopened cases already judged, and the one who had been convicted must win. He dealt with embassies, among which anyone who had been helped by that divine tongue was an enemy, and he and his city and his people had to meet with misfortunes. In this helpless state there were two means of approach to him. One was if someone paid money to his wife. She sat as though at a most conspicuous counter, using her women companions as go-betweens for both her body and her business, having turned what of old the Egyptians called a court of justice into a market of verdicts; whoever had dealt with her found Typhos gracious, for in other respects he was tame and docile toward the women's quarters, and knew how grateful he must be to them for having won him the tyranny. This was one resource in difficulty for those who found him hard; another was if one approached one of the murderous company of Typhos's intimates. These were called great and blessed — shrivelled and counterfeit little men. One had to come forward to them and pour out some abuse of Osiris,

fitted out with cleverness; and this was done by those who cared least for virtue and thought it no shame to make gain from every quarter. At once they changed their fortune as they had changed their judgment; for the saying flowed into the tyrant's house and was paraded at table, and so he returned favour for favour. One man did this, and a second, and they profited, but they knew they were hateful to the gods and to sober people; most held out. There was one man, of weight, but brought up by philosophy in a rather rustic way and unpractised in the manners of the city. This man had obtained from Osiris, like everyone else, very many good things: that he himself should be free of public burdens, and that his country should bear its burdens more easily. When many people at that time, for many reasons, were composing verses and writing speeches and hymns to Osiris, showing Osiris gratitude for his kindness, he was as grateful as they, and more, since he was more able; he composed and wrote and sang to the lyre in the Dorian mode, which alone he thought could hold the weight of character and diction. Yet he did not bring it out to the crowd; but if there was a hearing that understood manly words, would not put up with being tickled, and was pierced

to the heart, to that hearing he joined his words. He knew that Osiris above all was an exact judge of such things heard, of speeches for a day and speeches for a long time; yet he refused to say anything about Osiris to Osiris, both because he did not think a speech an equal return for a deed, and because, from the rustic way in which he had been brought up, he shrank from a reputation for flattery. But when Typhos had seized Egypt by force and was ruling as tyrant, this man became more rustic still: then he brought them out, then he showed his speeches, while everyone shuddered to hear them; for he thought it impious not to be openly a hater of those who had done terrible things to the benefactor. He called down the most murderous curses on Typhos, in speech and in writing, and at home and in the marketplace he who had once been blamed for silence was a chatterer. Everywhere in his speeches was Osiris, everywhere in gatherings; wherever he was, Osiris's deeds were sung, and he pressed his stories on those who could not bear them. He paid no heed to old men and friends who admonished him, nor did fear shake him from his impulse; he seemed like a madman, with a kind of free madness. So

he did not stop until he had stood beside Typhos himself, as close as possible, when the chosen men from everywhere were gathered with him, and had drawn out a long speech in praise of his brother, advising him to show virtue, since it belonged to him so closely. Typhos was burning and plainly maddened, but out of shame before the assembly he held his hands, temperate by necessity. One could guess his mind from his face, which changed through varied forms of passion; so in a very short time he became every colour. From then on he was more hostile and did worse. He tore down the good things of Osiris's reign and contrived further evils, shaking the cities whose cause the man pleaded, and devising some evil of his own for him, so that he might never be released to go home, but must stay by compulsion to lament, seeing those he hated prospering. While the stranger was in this plight, a god strengthened him, appearing clearly and bidding him endure. Not years, he said, but months were fated, in which the Egyptian sceptres would hold up the claws of the beasts and hold down the heads of the sacred birds.

The stranger had seen this writing engraved on obelisks and holy shrines, and the god explained to him the meaning of the hieroglyph as well, and gave him a sign of the time. "When," he said, "those who are now in power attempt to innovate even in matters of our worship, expect that after a short while the Giants" — meaning these foreigners — "will be out of the way, driven by their own avenging spirits. And if some part of the faction is left over and not all wiped out at once, and Typhos himself remains in the palace, do not despair of the gods even so. Here is another token for you: when we purify the air about the earth with water and fire, polluted by the breath of the godless, then justice will follow on the rest as well; expect at once the better order, with Typhos out of the way. For such monsters we drive out with fire-bolts and thunder." Then what had long been hard seemed happy to the stranger, and he no longer fretted at his compulsory stay, through which he was to be an eyewitness of the gods' visitation. For it was not humanly possible to guess