Changed for Despair—one laid upon the shelf,
We take the other. Under heaven’s high cope
Fortune is God—all you endure and do
Depends on circumstance as much as you.
But the modernization is not just now our pursuit, so the epigrams will be given in something approaching chronological order and the translator’s name mentioned when known.
Plato
THE MISER AND THE MOUSE
“Thou little rogue, what brings thee to my house?”
Said a starv’d miser to a straggling mouse.
“Friend,” quoth the mouse, “thou hast no cause to fear;
I only lodge with thee, I eat elsewhere.”