longs for everything not his own as if it were absolutely necessary, and
with the idea that he could not live without it.

"Consequently I would gladly, since you call yourself my friend, afford
you a little of my own wealth. It is far more secure and imperishable
than yours, and no one envies it or plots against it, neither populace
nor tyrant: best of all, the larger the number of persons who share it,
the greater it will grow. In what, accordingly, does it consist? In
using the little one has with as much satisfaction as if it were
inexhaustible, in refraining from the goods of others as if they
contained some mighty danger, in wronging no man, in doing well to
many, and in numberless other details, which only a person of leisure
could rehearse. I, for my part, should choose, if it were absolutely
necessary to suffer either one or the other, to perish by violence
rather than by deceit. The former falls to the lot of some by the decree
of Fortune, but the latter only as a result of folly and great greed of
gain: it is, therefore, preferable to fall by the crushing hand of Fate
[Footnote: Omitting [Greek: ti], and reading [Greek: thehioy], which the
MSS. give.] rather than by one's own baseness. In the former instance a
man's body is laid low, but in the latter his soul is ruined as
well,[lacuna] but in that case a man becomes to a certain extent the
slayer of himself, because he who has once taught his soul not to be
content with the fortune already possessed, acquires a boundless desire
for increased advantages." (Mai, pp.174 and 538. Zonaras, 8, 4.)

25. And they presented themselves for the enlistment with the greatest
zeal, believing, each man of them, that his own defection would mean the
overthrow of the fatherland. [Footnote: Cp. Plutarch, Life of Pyrrhus,
chapter 18 (early).] (Mai, p.176.)