But idly here I sit cumb'ring the ground,
I, who amid the Greeks no equal own
In fight,—
for he laments because though possessing virtue he does not make use of it; but being indignant with the Greeks (I. i. 490):—
No more he sought
The learned council, nor the battlefield;
But wore his soul away, and only pined
For the fierce joy and tumult of the fight.
And so Phoenix admonished him (I, ix. 433):—
To teach thee how to frame
Befitting speech, and mighty deeds achieve.
After his death he is indignant at that inertia, saying (O. xi. 489):—
Rather would I live upon the soil as the hireling of another
with a lordless man who had no great livelihood, than bear
sway among the dead that are no more.
And he adds the cause (O. xi. 498):—
For I am no longer his champion under the sun, so mighty a
man as once I was, when in wide Troy I slew the best of the
host, succoring the Argives.
That saying of the Stoics, that good men are friends of the gods, is taken from Homer, who says about Amphiaerus (O. xv. 245):—