ABSTRACT
I am not astounded that Megalopolis which the Arkadians founded in all eagerness, and for which Greece had the highest hopes, should have lost its beauty and ancient prosperity, or that most of it should be ruins nowadays, because I know that the daemonic powers love to turn things continually upside down, and I know that fortune alters everything, strong and weak, things at their beginning and things at their ending, and drives everything with a strong necessity and according to her whim. Mycenae which led the Greeks in the Trojan War, and Nineveh, seat of the Assyrian Kingdom are deserted and demolished . . . The sanctuary of Bel survives at Babylon, but of that Babylon which was the greatest city the sun saw in its time, nothing was left except a fortress wall, like the one at Tiryns in the Argolid. The daemonic power annihilated all these, and Alexander’s city in Egypt and Selenkos’s city on the Orontes were built yesterday and the day before, and have risen to such greatness and such prosperity because Fortune is favouring them . . . This is how temporary and completely insecure human things are . . .
