Post 5.19.2013.9

Jocasta:  Why do you seek after the goddess Ambition?
The worst of all; this goddess is Injustice.
Often she comes to happy homes and cities,
and when she leaves, she has destroyed their owners,
she after whom you rave.  It's better, child,
to honor Equality who ties friends to friends,
cities to cities, allies to allies.
For equality is stable among men.
If not, the lesser hates the greater force,
and so begins the day of enmity.
Equality set up men's weights and measures,
gave them their numbers.  And night's sightless eye
equal divides with day the circling year.
While neither, yielding place, resents the other.
So sun and night are servants to mankind.
Yet you will not endure to hold your house
in even shares with him?  Where's justice then?
Why do you honor so much tyrannic power
and think that unjust happiness is great?
It's fine to be looked up to?  But it's empty.
You want to have much wealth within your halls,
much trouble with it?
And what is "much"?  It's nothing but a name.
Sufficiency's enough for men of sense.
Men do not really own their private goods;
we simply care for things which are the gods',
and when they will, they take them back again.
Wealth is not steady; it is of a day.