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Updated: May 4, 2025
But Amasis had his superstitions, and the constant good fortune of Polycrates seemed to him so different from the ordinary lot of kings that he feared that some misfortune must follow it. He perhaps had heard the story of Solon and Croesus. Amasis accordingly wrote a warning letter to his friend.
His recommendation, according to this account, was to "cheat boys with dice, and men with oaths," an imitation of Polycrates of Samos, not very honorable to a lawful commander, to take example, namely, from a tyrant; nor in character with Laconian usages, to treat gods as ill as enemies, or, indeed, even more injuriously; since he who overreaches by an oath admits that he fears his enemy, while he despises his God.
What is it?" he said, drawing her hands down, so that she had to turn her face to his. "Nothing...I don't know...a superstition. I've been so happy here!" "Is our happiness too perishable to be transplanted?" She smiled and answered by another question. "You don't mind doing it, then?" Amherst hesitated. "Shall I tell you? I feel that it's a sort of ring of Polycrates.
Soon afterwards a fish was caught by the royal fisherman, and was served up at the king's table there, inside the body of the fish, was the ring; and when Polycrates saw that, he felt that the gods had restored him his gift, and that his destruction was determined upon; which came true, for he was caught by pirates at sea, and crucified upon a rocky headland.
But Fortune, it seems, was not to be thus outgeneraled. A few days after Polycrates had returned, a certain fisherman on the coast took, in his nets, a fish of very extraordinary size and beauty; so extraordinary, in fact, that he felt it incumbent on him to make a present of it to the king.
Polycrates was much pleased at the prospect of a large accession to his funds, and he sent the messenger, as Oretes had proposed. Oretes prepared to receive him by filling a large number of boxes nearly full with heavy stones, and then placing a shallow layer of gold or silver coin at the top.
Now at Samos he dedicated offerings because of the guest-friendship between himself and Polycrates the son of Aiakes; at Lindos for no guest-friendship but because the temple of Athene at Lindos is said to have been founded by the daughters of Danaos, who had touched land there at the time when they were fleeing from the sons of Aigyptos.
Or even if the good Bishop had taken a simpler line and told the boys some old story, like the story of Polycrates of Samos, I should have been more comfortable.
This is the only sort of lost riches on which we can look back with comfort out of the depths of present and pressing poverty; the pearl is so very precious that it confers on its possessor a certain dignity which does not entirely pass away, even when the jewel has slipped from his grasp, following the ring of Polycrates.
Many others were to be seen begging people like Xerxes, Darius, or Polycrates. Philip. These royal downfalls are extraordinary almost incredible. But what of Socrates, Diogenes, and such wise men? Menippus. Socrates still goes about proving everybody wrong, the same as ever; Palamedes, Odysseus, Nestor, and a few other conversational shades, keep him company.
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