2. But Timocles the comic writer, asserting that tragedy is

[[354]]useful in many respects to human life, says in his Women celebrating the Festival of Bacchus—

My friend, just hear what I'm about to say.
Man is an animal by nature miserable;
And life has many grievous things in it.
Therefore he has invented these reliefs
To ease his cares; for oft the mind forgets
Its own discomforts while it soothes itself
In contemplation of another's woes,
And e'en derives some pleasure and instruction.
For first, I'd have you notice the tragedians;
What good they do to every one. The poor man
Sees Telephus was poorer still than he,
And bears his own distress more easily.
The madman thinks upon Alcmæon's case.
Has a man weak sore eyes? The sons of Phineus
Are blind as bats. Has a man lost his child?
Let him remember childless Niobe.
He's hurt his leg; and so had Philoctetes.
Is he unfortunate in his old age?
Œneus was more so. So that every one,
Seeing that others have been more unfortunate,
Learns his own griefs to hear with more content.

3. And we accordingly, O Timocrates, will restore to you the relics of the feast of the Deipnosophists, and will not give them, as Cothocides the orator said, meaning to ridicule Demosthenes, who, when Philip gave Halonnesus to the Athenians, advised them "not to take it if he gave it, but only if he restored it." And this sentence Antiphanes jested upon in his Neottis, where he ridicules it in this manner—

My master has received (ἀπέλαβεν) as he took (ἔλαβεν)
His patrimonial inheritance.
How would these words have pleased Demosthenes!

And Alexis says, in his Soldier—

A.Receive this thing.
B.What is it?
A.Why the child
Which I had from you, which I now bring back.
B.Why? will you no more keep him?
A.He's not mine.
B.Nor mine.
A.But you it was who gave him me.
B.I gave him not.
A.How so?
B.I but restored him.
A.You gave me what I never need have taken.

[[355]] And in his Brothers he says—

A. For did I give them anything? Tell me that.

B. No, you restored it, holding a deposit.