Hear what a king endur’d, and learn content.
Sum up your miseries, number up your sighs,
The tragic stage shall give you tear for tear,
And wash out all afflictions but its own.[42]
The following fragment from Diphilus conveys a very favourable idea of the spirit of the dialogue, in what has been termed the New Comedy of the Greeks, or that which was posterior to the age of Alexander the Great. Of this period Diphilus and Menander were among the most shining ornaments.
We have a notable good law at Corinth,
Where, if an idle fellow outruns reason,
Feasting and junketting at furious cost,
The sumptuary proctor calls upon him,
And thus begins to sift him.—You live well,